THE REAL SARAH BERNHARDAT WHOM HER AUDIENCES NEVER KNEW

101 348

The Real
SARAH BERNHARDT

Real

SARAH BERNHARDT

WHOM HER AUDIENCES NEVER KNEW

Told to Her Friend Mme. Pierre

Berton and Translated into

English by Basil Woon

Illustrated

BONI AND LIVERIGHT

PUBLISHERS :: 1924 :: NEV* T 7 r ~rr

Copyright* IQ3^ by

BON I AND LlVERIGHT, INC.

Rights Reserved

XK THK tTKZTXD ftTATXS OF AMXX.XCA

CONTENTS

CHAPT1B JACK

INTRODUCTION 17

Why this book has been written: at Sarah
Bernhardt's own request, to reveal to the
world "the real Sarah whom her audiences
never knew."

I. MY FIRST MEETING WITH SARAH

BERNHARDT . . - 23

A child's visit with her mother to Bernhardt's
dressing-room at the Porte Saint Martin
Theatre. The angel with the golden voice.

II. THE MYSTERY OF SARAH'S BIRTH 32

A resume of the many unfounded statements
as to Sarah's origin. George Bernhardt's
statement in the "Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger."
"Sarah Barnum" an attack on Sarah. Did
Sarah know who her father was? What
she told me herself.

III. WHEN AND WHERE SARAH WAS

BORN ,., . 37

The old house in the Rue de PEcole de
Medecine. Sarah's Flemish- Jewish girl
mother. Her origin and tragic history.
Fatherless in Berlin at thirteen. An unfor-
tunate love affair. Betrayal and flight to
Paris with a new lover. Abandoned in
Paris. Her life as a milliner. A butterfly
of the Quartier Latin. Julie Bernard's
meeting and liaison with the law student,
Edouard Bernhardt, who became Sarah's
father. The Bernard family in Paris. The
baby put out to nurse in Brittany, Sarah's
first escape from death by fire.
5

6 Contents

CRAPTEK

IV. A TRAGIC AND SORDID CHILD-

HOOD 4)

Julie Bernard's gay life. Baby Sarah's curious
bath. An unexpected visit to the baby,
and its sequel. Sarah as a deserted waif*
The child-slave of a Paris concierge. Paris
streets as a play-ground. Badly fed,
anaemic, and compelled to draw water.
Strange encounter with Aunt Rosine. Six-
year-old Sarah's first attempt at suicide.
Unable to read or write at seven. Ill for
two years. Her first school at Auteuil.

V. AT SCHOOL AT AUTEUIL ... 6]
A school play. Sarah's first "death scene."
Her fear of her mother. A bad case of
stage fright. Her mother's liaison with the
Due de Morny. Julie's anger with her
daughter. De Morny's love for his mis-
tress's wilful child. Sarah's first interview
with her father. He settles an income on
her. Return to her mother's flat. Temper
and fever. Last interview with her father.
His early death. Entrance as pupil at
Grandchamps Convent, Versailles. De
Morny's desire she should be baptised as a
Catholic. Her first revelation as a mimic.
Flight over the convent wall. Her third
and final expulsion from school.

VI. SARAH BERNHARDT AT FIFTEEN 7:
Sent home in disgrace. Thin, weedy and
shock-headed. Sarah's desire to be a nun.
Her visit to a theatre. Student at an art
school The fascination of the theatre. All-
night adventure at the Op&ra Comique.
Sarah's first love affair. Refusal to marry
a wealthy tanner's son. Her mother devel-
ops into a fashionable beauty. Julie's salon.
Sarah's many admirers. Her 1,000 pro-

Contents 7

-TEH. *AGB

posals of marriage. "Men disgusted me!"
A too persistent lover.

VII. ADOLESCENCE AND DAWN OF

ARTISTIC TALENT .... 85
Sarah's budding artistic talent. First prize
for a painting. Her first press notice.
Julie's dislike for her "stupid child."
Sarah's sisters, Jeanne and Regine. Sarah
at 1 6. Her mother's removal to the Rue
St. Honore. Proximity to the Theatre
Frangaise. Sarah's stage friends. Her
passion for the theatre. Her excessive thin-
ness. Three hours in prayer. Religious
mania. "I will marry none other than
God!" De Morny overhears Sarah recit-
ing* "Our Sarah will become an actress!"

VIII. FROM THE CONSERVATOIRE TO

THE COMEDIE FRANCAISE . . 98
Recommended to Auber by de Morny. The
voice of gold. Triumphantly admitted as a
student. Second prize for comedy, but no
certificate of merit. Sarah's disappoint-
ment. Called to the Comedie Frangaise at
eighteen. Adverse criticisms. Her mother's
anger. Sarah's second attempt at suicide.
Her -weird fascination for death. An out r
break of temper. How Sarah defied a critic.
Her love for animals. Tiger cub in her
dressing-room.

IX. SAVED BY MOTHERHOOD . . . i

Fits of temper. Hasty resignation from the
Comedie Frangaise. Cast off by her mother.
Flight to Spain. Short-lived engagement to
a bull-fighter. Return to Paris. Sarah
drifts into dangerous waters. Life in her
own flat. Wilful, amazingly pretty, talent-
ed, but unambitious. Romance with Prince

Contents

E* PAGB

de L. Birth of her son. Penniless, with
2,000 francs of debts. Vain appeal to the
boy's father. A brutal refusal. Sarah re-
solves to work. The turning point of her
life. Return to the stage.

X. PIERRE BERTON BRINGS SARAH

TO THE ODEON 123

First meeting with Pierre Berton. He intro-
duces her to the Odeon. Sarah's debut a
fiasco. Work as an understudy. Loved
and encouraged by Berton. Hard labour,
Her marvellous memory. A scene with
Prince Napoleon : "a madonna who behaves
like a devil." Royal favour. Dumas and
the negress. The Odeon in an uproar.
Sarah's first big success.

XL FIRST MEETINGS WITH COPPEE

AND VICTOR HUGO .... 136
A celebrity at 24, Friendship with Coppee.
"Le Passant" at the Tuileries. Kissed by
the Emperor, First meeting with Victor
Hugo. Rise of Sarah as a star. Her lux-
uriously furnished flats, A salary of 160
francs a month. Perpetually in debt. Ber-
ton's picture of Sarah's flat. The house on
fire. Sarah rescues her baby at the risk of
her life. Unfounded stories of arson*
"Bernhardt is dead!" Sarah's gruesome
practical joke.

XIL THE WAR OF 1870 150

How Sarah heard the first news. "Aux boule-
vards 1" Stirring scenes in the Place de
1'Opera. Great gathering at the Odeon.
Sarah's electrical singing of the "Mar-
seillaise." Shoulder-high in the Soul'
Mich*. Her quarrel and reconciliation
with Berton. Sarah as an official propa-

Contents 9

, PAGJS

gandist. She opens the Odeon as a mili-
tary hospital.

XIII. THE SIEGE OF PARIS AND THE

COMMUNE 163

Jules Favre and Rochefort. My visit to .
Sarah's 'hospital. Her wounded the best
cared for in the city. Her own dinner
bread and beans. Paris under siege. Ber-
ton returns from the front. Her friendship
with Comte de Kerarty, Under-Secretary
for Food Supplies. Paul de Remusat, play-
wright and revolutionary. Sarah as an in-.
spirer of men. Alexander Dumas' tribute.
An unwelcome lover: the Communish Pre-
fet of Police. Sarah smacks his face. Gap-
tain O'Connor. Sarah falls in love with .
her patient. A refugee. Shot at in the
Park of St. Cloud..

VICTOR HUGO'S "RUY BLAS" . . 179
The Hugo Revival. Sarah determines to se-
cure the leading part. Hugo at rehearsals.
Sarah's triumphant success. Victor Hugo's
diamond "tear." Sarcey's brutal criticism.
Cause of his enmity against Sarah. She
throws over Berton for Sarcey. The
adverse criticisms suddenly cease.

SARAH'S RETURN TO THE COM-

EDIE FRANCAISE 190

Sarcey's influence at the Comedie. Sarah's
need of money. Nine-room flat, five ser-
vants and two carriages on 600 francs a
month. Francois Cohen, a Jew furniture
dealer and dramatic critic. How her flat
was furnished. Credit for six years. Called
back to the Comedie Franchise. Sarah's
farewell to the Odeon. The zooth night
of "Ruy Bias."

Contents

IFTJJB. PAGE

<XVL A DISAPPOINTING DEBUT . . . 201
Death at the Banquet. A tiff with Pierre
Berton. Chilly's fatal seizure. Odeon
claims 10,000 francs damages from Sarah.
Another death. Sarah wishes to play Brit-
tanicus. Over-ruled by Sarcey. Debut in
"Mademoiselle de Belle Island." Mother's
sudden illness. Sarah's acting ruined.
Her rivalry with Sophie Croisette.

XVIL SARAH'S ROSEWOOD COFFIN . . 213
Famous at 28. Sarah falls in love with
Mounet-Sully. Why she broke with Sar-
cey. Her quarrels with Mounet-Sully. An
attack of pleurisy. Only five years to live.
Refusal to obey the doctor's orders. Com-
plete recovery. How Sarah acquired her
coffin. Her fondness for being photo-
graphed in it. A mock funeral. Coffin her
constant companion. Its utility as a bed-
stead. Sarah as author, dramatist, painter,
and sculptor.

XVIIL "LA GRANDE SARAH" 224

An extraordinary figure. Paris divided into
two camps. Wild stories told about her.
Sarah's "five o'clocks." Her statuary.
Adolphe de Rothschild's bust. Sarah's
studio. First meeting with Lagrennee. A
bashful lover. "Sarah's little dog." Cap-
tain O'Connor's revenge. Sarah witnesses
a duel. Her lover wounded. Exiled to
St. Petersburg.

XIX. HER ECCENTRICITIES 235

L'enfant terrible. Her glory in publicity.
Great, in spite of her escapades. Sarah's
balloon ascent. My disappointment at being
left behind. Anger of the director of the
Comedie. A fine remitted and a resigna-

Contents 1 1

APTER *AGB

tion withdrawn. Sarah builds a house.
Her face a model for her mural decoration.
Her romance with George Clairin. In
Clairin's studio. His portraits of Sarah,

XX. SARAH'S FIRST LONDON TRIUMPH 246

A Queen of the Stage. A striking figure of a
woman. Sarah as a conversationalist.
Je men fichisme. A populariser of fash-
ions. Her name an asset to tradespeople.
Sarah's long list of artist friends. Asked
to appear in London. Insists on being made
a full societaire at the Comedie. Queen
Victoria's veto on Sarah appearing at Wind-
sor. Triumphant debut in "Phedre." Vio-
lent campaign against Sarah in Paris.
Gladstone introduces her to King Leopold.
Scandalised London. Final resignation
from Comedie Franchise.

XXI. SHE FORMS HER OWN COMPANY 258

Sarah at 36. Her son Maurice, a boy of 15
with 60,000 francs a year for pocket money.
An actor attacked by hired ruffians. Sarah
organises a company of her own. "La
Dame aux Camelias." Sarah's suggestions
ignored. Failure teaches Dumas wisdom.
"Sarah's Epitaph" a misnomer. A fine of
100,000 francs. How Sarah staved off pay-
ment. "Frou-Frou" in Brussels. Meeting
with Queen Alexandra. Visit to the Danish
Court. How she humbled a German Min-
ister. Sarah's first tour of the French prov-
inces.

XXII. HER FIRST AMERICAN TOUR . . 267

Mixed views on America. Dislike of Ameri-
can women. Irving and the "country of
barbarians." "La Dame aux Camelias" in
New York. Condemned as immoral. Tri-

12

Contents

umphant success under another title. Fi-
nancial success of American tour. Meeting
with Commodore Vanderbilt. A souvenir
handkerchief and its fate. Theodore Roose-
velt's tribute. Sarah's dislike of special
trains.

XXIII. A NATIONAL IDOL 277

Effect of Sarah's American tour in France.
L'enfant terrible returns as a national idol.
Her influence on the French theatre. Her
romance with Philippe Gamier. Sarah's
opinion of American cooking. Damala,
"The Diplomatist Apollo/' and his wild life
in Paris. Sarah's curiosity about him. A
drug-taker. His meeting with Sarah's mor-
phinomaniac half-sister. Jeanne's unhappy
story. Her dead mother's foibles. Sarah's
devotion to Jeanne. Craze for morphia in
Paris.

XXIV. SARAH'S MEETING WITH DAMALA 287

First meeting of Sarah and the handsome
Greek. "The wickedest man in Paris."
The only man Sarah could not conquer.
Garnier's rage against Damala, and the se-
quel. A bouquet of lilies. She asks Damala
to join her company. His family exile him
to Russia. Preparations for Sarah's great
tour of Europe. A new lover in Lisbon.
A "death scene" in Madrid. Guest of an
Archduke in Vienna. Switzerland, Hol-
land and Scandinavia.

XXV. SARAH IN RUSSIA 295

Our arrival at St. Petersburg. Sarah's sur-
prise party. My prince. Gala perform-
ance at National Theatre. A gracious Em-
press. The Czar's gift to Sarah. Her
re-union with Damala, A cold-blooded

Contents

and cynical lover. His brutal treatment
of Sarah. My grand-ducal persecutor.
Supper by Imperial command.

XXVI. HER MARRIAGE TO DAMALA . , 306
The most tragic episode of Sarah's career: a
sudden decision. Her one-sided passion.
Marriage in London. Speedy disillusion.
A congenitally faithless and brutal husband.
Flight with another woman. His penitent
return. Trip to Brussels with a pretty
Belgian. Sarah's ridiculous plight. Effect
of her troubles on her beauty. Her jeal-
ousy. Damala demands 80,000 francs as
the price of his return. Reduced to Prince
Consort. Illness and forgiveness. On tour
together again. Damala's death.

XXVIL IN MANAGEMENT AT THE AM-

BIGU 317

Sarah as a Greek subject. Passport difficulties
during the war. She becomes the lessee of
the Ambigu. Production of Richepin's "La
Glu" and Catulle Mendes' "Les Meres En-
nemies." Jean Richepin's adventurous
career. Sarah's rival, Marie Colombier.
Their literary warfare. "Sarah Barnum"
and the reply, "Marie Pigeonnier." Sarah's
love affair with Richepin. At daggers
drawn with Pierre Berton. Sardou's
"Theodora." Revelations from Sardou's
letters.

JCXVIIL SARAH'S ENORMOUS EARNINGS .
Breach with Richepin. Sarah's retort. The
perennial pantomime. Her meeting with
Gustave Dore. Their sketching tours to-
gether. Sarah in trousers as "the old paint-
er's apprentice." Her profits at the Porte
St. Martin. Her enormous earnings. For-

327

14 Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

eign tours her milch cow. Sarah's house-
hold staff. Accident that resulted in the
loss of her leg. Barnum's offer of $10,000
for the limb. Sarah's long friendship with
Jules Lemaitre.

XXIX. EDMOND ROSTAND 336

Rostand and Maeterlinck as Sarah's models.
Imprisoned in her studio. Rostand's wor-
ship of Sarah. His frantic letters. Her
first hearing of "L'Aiglon." Midnight
drives in the Bois. All night on a doorstep,
Sarah's first meeting with Rostand. The
persistent "wild man." His flight from
Sarah's presence and the sequel. She lays
the foundation of his fame. Maurice Ros-
tand's tribute to Sarah.

XXX. SARAH AND THE ROYAL FAMILY . 347

"Le Theatre Sarah Bernhardt." Sentimental
affairs give place to business cares. She
settles in the Boulevard Pereire. Cheated
right and left. A London hotel incident.
Sarah's vegetarianism. Her productions
at her own theatre, "Bernhardt's circus/'
Friendship with King Edward and Queen
Alexandra. "Dogs and dresses." Com-
mand performances in England. Her cour-
age on the operating table. Penniless after
earning millions. At the front at 71.

XXXI. THE FINAL CURTAIN 356

Her ideal. Purchase of her Brittany estate.

Sarah's summer house on Belle Isle. An
alligator story. Her return to the stage
after the war. "Athalie." Greatest ovation
in her career. Verneuil's "Daniel." Play-
ing from an armchair. Filmed while dying.
Her last words.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Mme. Bernhardt in her Dressing-room during her
Interpretation of La Gloire, by Maurice Rostand,
in 1921 Frontispiece

FACING
PAGE

Baptismal Certificate of Sarah Bernhardt, May 21, 1856 34

Sketch of Therese Meilhan (afterwards Mme. Pierre

Berton) by Georges Clairin, 1881 56

Sarah Bernhardt. One of the best of the earliest pictures 82

Sarah Bernhardt (1859) 116

Sarah Bernhardt in a Scene from La Tosca with Pierre

Berton, when their Romance was at its Height 128

Sarah Bernhardt in Le Passant 140

Sarah Bernhardt in her Studio Dress 170

Sarah Bernhardt in Hamlet ,. 192

Sarah Bernhardt (aged 30) and her son, Maurice, on

the only occasion when he acted with her ... 229

Sarah Bernhardt in Caricature 236

Sarah Bernhardt in Theodora , . ........ 244

Sarah Bernhardt in Adrienne Lecouvreur . . . . 298

Sarah Bernhardt in Les Bouffons, 1906 312

Letter of Congratulation from Victorien Sardou . . . 324

Mme, Bernhardt's Sitting-room at her Last Home,

56, Boulevard Pereire, Paris 342

INTRODUCTION

NEVER was more apt the German proverb, "Truth is its
own justification," than in the telling of the story of that
most remarkable of women, Sarah Bernhardt. During
her life, in spite of the fact that she enjoyed more wide-
spread publicity than any other person, man or woman,
remarkably little was known by the public of her real life
story. The very extent of this world-wide publicity
served, in fact, as a sort of smoke-screen to conceal the
intimate personality of the woman it vaunted.

To the playgoers of the world, and even to those who
had never seen her act, Sarah Bernhardt was for ever
acting a part. She shared her glory with the dozens of
poets and playwrights whose inspired interpreter she was.
The laurel wreath around her brow was of the same
tinsel quality as the scenery which framed her personality.

It is hard to begin this work of telling the true, the
intimate story of Sarah Bernhardt without laying oneself
open to the charge of revealing secrets that were better
left inviolate, of tearing down rather than building up
the laborious character-structure of an international idol.
But I refuse to allow these first pages to become a
justification the work itself will be that. What I am
attempting now is simply an explanation.

If, in the course of this book, certain episodes are

171

Introduction 19

"revealing to the world the Sarah whom- the audiences
never knew."

A word about Madame Berton. She is the widow of
Pierre Berton, the actor and playwright, who, before his
marriage to her, was the adored intimate of Bernhardt.
Their liaison, which is recounted hereafter, lasted two
years, and even after they separated their friendship
continued.

It was Berton who convinced Duquesnel, the director
of the Odeon, of Sarah's genius as a tragedienne ; it was
Berton who encouraged her and taught her and who,
more than any other man, was responsible for her early
triumphs. It was Berton who stood beside her when all
Paris sneered at and mocked her, and it was Berton who
defended her when the co-directors of the Odeon wished
to cancel her contract because of what they termed her
"incor legibility."

No living person, then, can be so fitted to tell Sarah's
true history as the widow of the man who, himself, lived
a part of it.

Madame Berton, after her marriage to Berton, accom-
panied her husband on many of Sarah's famous tours
about Europe. Even after her marriage, Therese Berton
remained Sarah's confidante and friend, though there
were intervals of coldness that were natural enough in
a temperament as self-centred, and as jealous as was
Sarah's.

From now on the story will be as Madame Berton
related it to me. I shall let her tell it here just as she

20 Introduction

told it me *n Paris, without the addition of literary
flourishes or anything that could detract from the
""dramatic power of the narrative itself.

BASIL WOON.

THE REAL SARAH BERNHARDT

The Real
SARAH BERNHARDT

CHAPTER I

FOR all my intimacy with Sarah Bernhardt (said Madame
Berton), I find it difficult to believe that she loved me.
I think that, on the contrary, she distrusted me, and I
even believe that at times she hated me, because it was
I, and not she, who had married Pierre Berton.

Yet she confided in me. She was at times hard-pressed
for somebody to whom she could tell her secrets. She
knew that I would keep my promise never to relate them
during her lifetime, and I know she told them to me
because she realised that one day even the most intimate
details of her life would belong by right to posterity.
J This great actress with Jewish, German, French and
Flemish (and probably also Gypsy) blood in her veins,
was born into that condition of life which even to-day
spells ruin, hate, despair and poverty for the great
majority. In those days illegitimacy was almost an in-
superable obstacle to recognition and success.

To the fact that the union of her mother and father
was never blessed by holy matrimony may with justice be
ascribed the impunity with which she was assailed during
the first forty or fifty years of her life by all manner of

24 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

critics, high and low. No less than three books or pam-
phlets were written attacking her before she had attained
her fortieth year.

Articles in the Parisian press were sometimes so viru-
lent as to be inconceivable, when it is remembered that
the object of their venom was the world's greatest actress,
the "Divine Sarah." Every blackmailing penny-a-liner in
Paris essayed to make Sarah pay him tribute at some time
or another. I do not think that she ever paid, but I do
know that the fits of rage and despair into which she was
thrown after reading these attacks often made her so ill
that for "days her understudy was obliged to play her part.

Her long fight to keep the truth of her birth from being
published is known. In telling me one day of the sordid
circumstances to which she owed her appearance in the
world she pledged me to secrecy during her lifetime, I
have kept that pledge, and it is only because she gave me
express permission to write this book after her death, and
because it is time that the world knew the true story of
this extraordinary genius, that I tell it now.

The "Divine" Sarah 'was divine only in her inspiration;
the "immortal" Sarah was immortal solely in her art
The real Sarah, the Sarah whom her intimates knew and
adored, was not so much a divinity as an idol ; a woman
full of vanity and frailty, dominated since birth by am-
bitious egoism and a determination to become famous.

She was the supreme woman of the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries; but it was not her supremacy
or her position at the pinnacle of theatrical success that
made her lovable. She was loved, not because she was a

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 25

saint but be:ause she was not a saint; for to err is human
and to be haman is to be loved. Even on the stage her
art was natural she did not pose, she lived.

In the history of the Christian world only one other
woman was born under a greater handicap than was
Sarah Bernhardt, and few women ever rose to a similar
fame. Yet Sarah, even at the height of her career, did
things which were justly condemned by strict-living people
and would not have been tolerated in the case of anyone
else.

Consider this woman. She was born to an unwed
Jewish mother whose birth-place was Berlin. Her father
was a French provincial lawyer, a profligate, who after-
wards became a world-traveller.

She was born a Jewess, baptized a Catholic. By birth
she was French, and by marriage she was Greek.

Throughout her life she was, firstly, an actress; sec-
ondly, a mother; thirdly, a great, a tempestuous lover.

She was a sculptress of extraordinary merit; she was a
painter whose pictures were exhibited in the Paris Salons
before she became famous as an actress ; she was a writer
with many books to her credit.

A temperamental morbidity was, I think, supreme in
her character, although many who knew her placed ambi-
tion first. After these came mother-love, vanity, affection
a,nd malice. She made more enemies than friends ; more
people feared her than loved her; yet her life was replete
with great sentimental episodes with some of the most
famous men of her time.

26 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

The happiest period of her life was during the infancy
of her son Maurice; her greatest joy was in his abiding
afiection. The bitterest period of her life was her old
age, when she was surrounded by jackals whose affection
for her was chiefly purchased by the money she mistakenly
lavished on them; and who reduced her to such a penniless
condition that, practically on her death-bed, she was
forced to pose for an American film company, so that her
debts and funeral expenses might in part be covered.

Fifty years of constant association taught me the truth
about Sarah Bernhardt. Others might have known her
longer, but none knew her better. None certainly could
speak with greater authority of her intimate life. I had
the details of her birth, her life, and her loves that are
here set forth from her own lips, and from the lips of
others who figured in her career.

The first time I met Sarah Bernhardt will live in my
memory for ever. A child of eight, I was taken to visit
the actress then beginning to taste the first fruits of

success in her loge at the Odeon Theatre.

x I .
I remember my fright as we crossed the vast, cavernous

stage, on our way to the stairs which led to the dressing-
rooms. Enormous pieces of scenery looked as though
they might topple on one at any moment. Cardboard
statues, which to my childish imagination seemed for-
bidding demons, leered at me from the shadows. Rough,
uncouth scene-shifters, acolytes of this painted Hades,
jostled me as we passed. The great height of the stage,
ending in a gloomy mystery of ropes, pulleys and plat-

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 27

forms which hinted at occult rites, awed me and made me
feel smaller than I really was (and I was very small!).

From time to time voices, bawling from the gloom but
whence exactly I neither knew nor could discover, echoed
and re-echoed through the shadows. The curtain was
up, and beyond the darkened proscenium I could faintly
discern the four-storied auditorium, awesome in its re-
sounding emptiness.

Whom could we be going to visit here, I wondered,
and clung tighter to my mother's protecting skirts, while
she inquired her way of a black-coated gentleman, who
appeared with disconcerting suddenness as we reached
the foot of the stairs. But I dared not voice the question,
and now we mounted a bewildering number of steps, each
bringing a more mysterious vista than the last.

Finally we reached the top of the stairs and my mother
led me down a long passageway, lined with doors which
had once been painted white but which were now a dirty
cream colour. Some of these doors had simply numbers;
others bore a name inscribed on a piece of pasteboard,
inserted in a metal holder.

Almost at the end of the corridor my mother stopped
before a door precise!^ similar to the Others, except that
instead of a number or a pasteboard it bore the name in
golden letters :

SARAH BERNHARDT

Even then the young actress had evinced her preference
for gold. She said that it matched her hair.

Receiving a summons to enter, my mother opened the

28 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

door and went in, dragging me resolutely after her.
Inside this door was another, inscribed in like fashion,
and when this in turn was opened, we found ourselves in
a large room illuminated by two windows and shaded
lights, for it was winter and the windows opened on a
courtyard.

This room contained a settee, an armchair, two other
chairs and a table, which had three movable mirrors
above it. The table was littered with pots and vases of
every description and a wild confusion of gold-backed
brushes and toilet accessories. A great vase full of car-
nations stood on it, and another filled with the same
flowers was on the floor near one of the windows. The
room was carpeted, but the carpet was so littered with
envelopes, pieces of paper and various articles of wearing
apparel that its design could not be discerned.

Seated before the table-de-tollette was an angel.

Let the reader remember that he is dealing with a
child's memory. My imagination had so been wrought
upon by the fearful caverns below that I had fully ex-
pected to see, enthroned here, in the upper chambers,
His Majesty Satan in all his glory. The sight then of
this radiant creature, her head literally crowned with a
tumbling glory of gold, came as a tremendous shock
until I recalled that, although that awful place down
below must have been Hell, we had mounted upwards
since then and must therefore by now have reached
Heaven I

As my mother shook hands, I ran behind her and,

The Real Sarah Bernhardt *9

terror-stricken at I know not what, hid my face in her
ample skirts. Then, as though from far away, I heard
the divinity speak.

"So this is little Therese !" she said. "Come here, ma
petite, and let Sarah Bernhardt kiss you 1"

But I would not go, and only buried my face all the
deeper in my mother's dress.

"Mais, ma mignonne" remonstrated the angel, "I can-
not see you if you hide like that! Cornel"

My mother, excusably vexed, dragged me from my
hiding-place.

"Come! come!" she said sharply; "speak to Mademoi-
selle ! Go and kiss her I"

Thus commanded in a tone I knew too well, I advai^d
a step and stood there shyly, not daring to lift my head.
Suddenly I was overwhelmed by two arms and a mass of
golden hair, which literally covered my head and shoul-
ders as Sarah Bernhardt caught me to her.

"La pauvre petite . . . la pauvre mignonne!" she kept
repeating, punctuating the words with -hearty hugs and
an embrace on both cheeks. Then, holding me at arm's
length :

"So, you want to be an actress?"
. Now this, to my knowledge, was the first occasion on
which I had ever heard that I was to be an actress. Cer-
tainly I had never mentioned the idea to anyone, least
of all to my mother, who was not a person to whom one
made confidences. I stood there dumb.

30 The Real Saran JtJernnarai

"Ma foi" ejaculated the angel, in her glorious voice,
"she is pretty enough!"

There followed a rapid exchange of remarks between
my mother and Sarah Bernhardt the connection between
whom I have never been able to fathom and during
these I was ordered to sit on the chair (my legs did not
touch the ground) and told not to open my mouth. As
if I would have dared to ! But I had become bold enough
to feast my eyes on the divinity, and to study her at
leisure.

How easily that first childish impression of Sarah
comes to me now, fifty years later!

Those amazingly blue eyes, widely-spaced; that arched
nose, a pulse beating in the sensitive nostril as she talked ;
that glorious mouth, full and red, the upper lip slightly
projecting over the under one; that firm chin, with the
dimple that Edmond Rostand afterwards raved about;
those high cheek-bones, the line of them extending to
where the hair covered the ears ; above all, that extraor-
dinary mass of unruly golden-red hair, tossed about in
riotous confusion and every direction.

Many another face I might see and forget, this one,
never 1

When Sarah stood up to say good-bye, I saw that she
was taller than my mother, and unbelievably slender*

As we went downstairs, I was in such an ecstatic state
of bliss that I had not the slightest fear of the gnomes
lurking in the shadows of the nether regions as we passed

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 3*

them again on our way out, nor do I remember my mother
talking to me.

My heart was dedicated to a goddess. Sarah Bem-
hardt, from that day onwards, was my idol.

CHAPTER II

WHAT is the truth about Sarah Bernhardt's birth? Have
I the right to tell it, even though I know the facts?
Have I the right to divulge this secret of all secrets, for
nearly four-score years locked in the breast of the great-
est woman of five epochs? Who am I that I should ven-
ture into the cupboards of the dead Great for the purpose
of rattling the skeletons I am certain to find there yes,
in the cupboards of all the dead great ones who later sur-
rounded this celebrated woman, and not alone Bernhardt?

I have faced this problem squarely, fought it out with
myself through long, sleepless nights, when publishers
were bedevilling me for the truth, the whole truth and
scarcely anything but the truth. It is a problem that will
raise a sharp conflict in the feelings of all my readers.
It is a problem for Poe.

Have I the right knowing what I do of the real cir-
cumstances surrounding not only the dead genius but her
living relatives also have I the right to tear the shroud
from that dead face, and let the world gaze afresh on a
long-familiar visage, only to find a new and wondrously
changed entity beneath?

I will be frank. I had made up my mind not to do it:
not for fear of giving offence to the dead, for 'twas from

32

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 33

this very glorious clay that I had the truth with permis-
sion to publish it, but from respect to the living. Sarah
Bernhardt not only left a son, Maurice Bernhardt; she
left grandchildren and great-grandchildren, little ones
whom I have watched joyously at play in the Pare Mon-
ceau, unknowing that at that very moment the great battle
for life was being staged in the drab little house on the
Boulevard Pereire. She had made up her mind that the
sorrows which were hers should never blemish these inno-
cent ones.

And yet what a fallacy, what a heartrending fallacy
it is to believe that such things can be concealed, or that,
being concealed, they do not fester in their hiding-places I

Scarcely had the last, sad curtain been rung down on
that greatest of real-life dramas than the scavengers of
literature those grisly people who lurk in the night of
life, dealing in calumny and lies began delving into the
past of Sarah Bernhardt, just as the real chiffoniers, those
horrible old women of the dawn, delve into the garbage
cans of Paris, seeking for Heaven knows what filth.

The mystery of her birth was Sarah's great secret.
Insatiable, the greedy public desired to rend this secret
and to tear it into little bits. Literary ghouls fell upon
the great woman's reputation and fought over it. They
disinterred legends that Sarah, while living, had success-
fully and scornfully proved untrue. They sent out lies
by the bushel, secure in the knowledge that the Golden
Voice, which alone could brand them, was stilled for ever.

Perhaps it was to be expected that the first of these

34 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

legends came from Germany, a country that Sarah
scorned and once refused to visit, although she had been
offered a million marks to do so; a country, moreover,
which had claimed Sarah as its own on more than one
occasion.

In 1902 the Berlin Lokal Anzelger published a "reve-
lation" of the birth of Sarah Bernhardt. She was born,
said the inspired writer, at Frankfort. Her father was
a German, her mother a Fleming. She had been taken
to France when a tiny child and there abandoned by her
parents.

"We are aware," said the Lokal Anzeiger, "that Sarah
herself claims to have been born in Paris. Our only
retort to this is : let her produce her birth certificate 1"

They knew, of course, that Sarah's birth was never
registered. Later I will tell you why.

Sarah Bernhardt was interviewed about these state-
ments at the time they were published. As always, she
refused to comment on the extraordinary story, and con-
tented herself with referring inquiring journalists to her
Memoirs, entitled "Ma Double Vie" which had been
published some years before.

This was the only mention that she made of her birth.
As far as the date goes, her version may have been
correct, although her baptismal certificate, herewith re-
produced, gives the event as having occurred on Sep-
tember 25, 1844!

Now comes George Bernhardt, a famous German, who
Ought to know better than to pander to the scandal-

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 35

mongers, and who states positively that Sarah's father
was his great-grandfather, George Bernhardt, and that
her mother was a Gypsy woman for whom he experienced
a temporary passion while living in Algeria.

But here he hedges. "At least," he says, "family
records tell of the existence of the child, and of the
allegation that George Bernhardt was the father; but
they also say that the assertion was denied by him, which
leads to the probability that Sarah Bernhardt had no
claim whatever on the name she bore."

Frankfort, and now Algiers 1 A Flemish mother and
a Gypsy mother I A fine haul for the scavengers I

Sarah had to fight rumours of this kind on several
occasions during her lifetime. In a scurrilous book which
was written many years ago it was asserted that she
"never knew who her father was."

This, as might be expected, was untrue. Sarah not
only knew who her father was, but knew him well.
Though she never lived with him, he visited her fre-
quently, especially when she was at school in the Convent
at Grandchamps, and when he died he left her a portion
of his fortune.

Sarah herself starts her Memoirs with this reference
to him: "My father was travelling in China at the time
why, I do not know."

Here, then, was the answer to the problem that had
been bothering me : it was clearly better to tell the truth
once and for all, and to set at rest all doubts concerning
this much-debated question of Sarah Bernhardt' s birth,

36 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

than to let every newspaper scavenger have his own way
with it, prolong the agony, and incidentally contrive, by
unscrupulous inference, to cast a shadow much blacker
than the importance of the matter justified.

To aid me in coming to this decision I had the knowl-
edge that Sarah herself, in telling the story to me many
years ago, was aware that one day it would be made
public, and wished things so. She knew that in time to
come she would belong to history, and also how little of
history is founded on actual fact. The last thing she
wanted was for the facts of her life to be at the mercy
of imaginative chroniclers, who would have nothing to
base their story on except rumour.

Thus she told it to me, and thus I tell it to you. Let
the world decide.

CHAPTER III

No. 5, rue de 1'Ecole de Medecine was a weird, queerly-
leaning tenement house in a black little side-street just
off the Boulevard St. Germain, near the Boulevard St.
Michel, in the heart of the students' quarter of Paris.
It was a poor dwelling, at best, with a crumbling fagade,
ornamented with some scarcely-discernible heraldic de-
vice which told of past dignity. It had a low, wide door-
way, with one of its great oak, iron-studded doors askew
on its hinges, so that a perpetual draught whistled up
the stone-flagged corridor that loomed darkly, Uke a
cave, from the street to the crumbling stairs. A four-
story building . . . each floor was just a trifle more
weather-beaten, more decrepit, than the next On the
ground floor, next to the loge du concierge, was a wine-
shop, smelling of last night's slops, where the brown-
aproned proprietor leaned against his little wooden bar
and filled new bottles with the dregs that had not been
drunk the day before; next to the wineshop stood a cob-
bler's stall, with the tap-tap of the cobbler's wooden
mallet resounding through the street to the courtyard at
the rear; and next to the cobbler's, the stall of a marchand
des frites, whose only merchandise was sliced potatoes
fried in olive oil.

37

38 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

On the first floor was the appartement of the wine-
dealer; on the second and third, logements for students
students who, returning nightly from the cafes of the
Boul' Mich', enlivened the aged edifice with their cries.

And on the fourth floor of this building, a day in the
early fall of 1844, * n a modest flat of three rooms
bedroom, sitting-room and kitchen was born the baby
who afterwards became Sarah Bernhardt.

Her mother, then a beautiful young woman in her late
teens, was named Julie Bernard, but sometimes she called
herself Judith Van Hard. Among her intimates she was
affectionately known as Youle.

It was eight o'clock at night. Youle was lying in bed,
her mass of red-gold hair tumbling over her shoulders
and down under the sheets. Her eyes of sapphire-blue
were closed, and her breathing hard and spasmodic.
Her features were drawn; her face pale.

Three other persons were in the room. One was a
man the doctor, busy packing up his instruments. The
other was a young friend, Madame Guerard. The third
was a tiny atom of humanity, barely a foot long and
weighing certainly not more than half a dozen pounds.
This infant's head was covered with a fuzz of reddish
hair resembling the mother's; its tiny mouth was open
and its little lungs were working at top-blast.

The temper for which Sarah Bernhardt was later to
become notorious was making its first manifestation.

The delivery had been difficult, and Julie was not asleep
ftut unconscious. Thus, though the baby cried all night,

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 39

the mother did not awaken, and in the morning Madama
Guerard sent off to the nearest synagogue for a Jewish
priest

But when the doctor came the crisis had passed; the
girl on the bed had recovered consciousness and was
already fondling her child. From then on her recovery
was rapid, and before little Sarah had properly got her
blue eyes open or begun to take an interest in things
around her, the beautiful little Jewish girl was back at
her work-table in the sitting-room, trimming hats for
which she was paid a few sous each by the clients whose
houses she visited in turn every week.

Julie Van Hard, or Bernard, was a Flemish Jewess
born of a struggling lower-middle-class family in Berlin.
Her father, originally from South Holland but a nat-
uralised German, had worked in a circus, but had for-
saken this occupation to go into the retail grain and seed
business, first in Hanover and then in Berlin. Her
mother was a German dressmaker and a great beauty.
When Julie was thirteen, her father died and left her
only a handful of marks with which to complete her
education.

Instead of doing so she chose to leave school, and be-
came an apprentice in a big Berlin millinery establish-
ment After working there a little more than a year,
she fell in love with a non-commissioned officer in a cav-
alry regiment, who seduced and then callously left her.
When the affair came to the ears of the girl's employer,
she was discharged in disgrace.

40 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

After that she left Berlin and went to Frankfort,
where she kept herself for a few months by making hats
(at which she was very clever) and singing on occasion
in cafes-concert. She was a lovely child, even in the
poor dresses she could afford, and having a talent for
music, had been taught the piano by her mother. She
displayed, however, little of the great histrionic ability
which was to develop in her daughter. In fact, Sarah
Bernhardt never completely satisfied herself from which
side of the family she derived her talent Her father's
relations, from what little she learned of them, were
comfortable, mediocre middle-class people in the French
provinces with German or Dutch connections, to be
sure, but with no "acting blood" as far as she could
discover.

The Van Hard family, however, was an offshoot of the
Kinsberger clan, who owned circuses and theatres in
Northern Europe before Napoleon's day, and who later
developed into wholesale dealers in grain. When Napo-
leon invaded Poland, in fact, a Kinsberger supplied him
with grain for his horses. The exact relationship of this
Kinsberger to Sarah she never properly knew, but he was
probably a cousin of her grandfather.

Away back therefore in this maternal line, there prob-
ably existed someone with a talent for the theatre.
Whether the ancestor in question ever used it is not on
record. We know that her grandfather was a performer
in a Dutch circus, but we do not know whether he was
a clown or an animal-tamer.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 4*

In Frankfort, Julie Bernard, the modiste, met a young
Frenchman, a courier in the diplomatic corps, and a wild
love affair followed, which culminated in the girl follow-
ing the young man to Paris. There they continued their
liaison for less than a month, however, since the courier's
parents, people of noble birth, stepped in and forbade
him ever to see the little German girl again. He left
her without warning, and without money.

For weeks afterwards little Julie, a stranger in a
strange land and speaking little French, lived as best she
might. Paris is a hard city now, for the unprotected
girl; it was harder then. Often the German waif came
perilously near starvation. Once, according to a story
that she later on in life related to Jeanne, her second
daughter, who told it to Sarah, she tried to commit sui-
cide by throwing herself under the wheels of a passing
coach. But she had misjudged the distance and the
wheels passed within inches of her.

What she did to eke out a bare living in those terrible
days we do not know. It is unlikely that she ever con-
fided the whole story to her daughters even to Jeanne,
her favourite. What is known is that she continued to
make hats whenever she could save sufficient sous to buy
the material, and perhaps she sang or danced in the
cabarets of the quarter; but this is unlikely, because of
her ignorance of French. Whatever she did, no one now
can blame her.

Eventually, she struck up an acquaintance with a law
student, who was registered on the books of the Univer-

42 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

sity of Paris as Edouard Bernhardt. The family name
of this man, according to what Sarah learned later, was
de Therard, and his baptismal name was "Paul."

The exact reasons for the dual nomenclature I cannot
give. Sarah herself knew of the matter only vaguely. I
suggested that de Therard was the student's right name,
but that he carried on his liaison with Julie under the
name of Bernhardt. Sarah admitted this was a plausible
inference, but insisted that the attorney for her father's
estate always referred to him as Bernhardt.

Bernhardt, or de Therard, was one of the wildest
youngsters in the Latin Quarter. He was constantly
getting into scrapes, which his family at Le Havre had
to pay for. Many of these scrapes were with women
much older than himself, and I'aventure amoureuse was
probably his strong or weak point. At any rate, he
succeeded in studying as little law as possible, for he
failed completely in all his examinations.

Where he and Julie met is unknown; probably it was
a simple rencontre de la rue } which is common enough
in Paris to-day. The nature of Julie's trade, when deliv-
ering her hats to her customers, took her frequently into
the streets of the quarter in which young Bernhardt was
studying and in which he prosecuted his love affairs. It
is likely that, seeing a marvellously pretty girl (of a type
then unusual in Paris), walking along the Boul' Mich',
he followed her and, being of the handsome, devil-may-
care type, pleased her so that she agreed to meet him
again.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 43

Be that as it may, the link between the little German
girl and the reckless Havre student soon became public
enough. Their appearance in any of the cafes or cabarets
of the quarter was the signal for a chorus of congratula-
tions and ironical greetings from Bernhardt's comrades.
The little flat at number 5, rue de PEcole de. Mede-
cine, was furnished and rented by Bernhardt for Julie,
out of his slender student's purse.

Two weeks before the birth of his child, Bernhardt re-
turned to Havre.

He wrote ardent letters to the forsaken mother and
sent regular sums for the child's support. Sometimes
he visited Paris, but rarely remained there longer than
twenty-four hours. As his financial circumstances im-
proved, for relatives bequeathed him fairly large sums,
he began to travel, and before his first voyage, to Por-
tugal, he suggested that the infant Sarah should be sent
to his own old nurse, now become a professional dry-
nurse, with a farm near Quimperle, in Brittany.

About this time Julie's fortunes underwent a sudden
change for the better. This came about through sev-
eral circumstances which occurred within a few weeks of
each other. First, a relative of the young girl died in
Holland, and bequeathed to her and each of her three
sisters an equal number of guelders. The sum was not
large, but it sufficed to lift Julie above immediate want.
She went to Holland to claim the money, and was gone
six months.

A few days after the legacy reached her, she discov-

44 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

ered to her astonishment that one of her sisters, Rosine,
who was her elder by four years and who was supposedly
in Marseilles, was in reality living in Paris. How she
was living is rather a mystery. But she seemed to be
well off, and she had been long enough in France to speak
the language excellently.

When Julie returned from Holland, she came by way
of Berlin and brought with her Henriette, her younger
sister, then aged thirteen. There was still another sister,
two years younger, and another aged twenty-eight, who
was married and who lived in the French West Indies.

Julie and Henriette, when they arrived in Paris, went
to live with Rosine, who had a flat in Montmartre. With
baby Sarah safely in the country, in charge of a capable
nurse, and with funds for the child's upkeep provided
by the father, Julie felt free to look around.

She was a remarkable woman by this time. Eighteen,
years old, very fair, with a marvellous complexion and
the wonderful head of hair that was to make her re-
nowned later on, Julie Bernard possessed a gay and care-
less disposition that would have made her notorious any-
where. With her sisters, she began frequenting the cafes
that were then fashionable, and it was not long before
the trio began to meet interesting people.

Among these acquaintances was a man whom Sarah
herself always referred to as "Baron Larrey," but who
was probably another man of title with a similar name.
Baron Larrey and Julie became first friends, then lovers,
and the relationship lasted five years.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 45

Far behind her now the dingy, decrepit old building at
5, rue de TEcole de Medecine ! Far behind heir the days
when she had to trudge weary miles, in all weathers, to
secure orders and deliver hats! Julie was now a "file
a la mode." She flaunted the latest fashions, the latest
colours, the latest millinery on the Boulevards and in the
exclusive restaurants. Her relationship with the Baron
commanded for her a certain respect in the gay, care-
free Bohemian world that was the Paris of 1845. No-
bles at Court commenced to be interested in her. Famous
personages of the stage consented to sit at her table.

She soon eclipsed in beauty and in accomplishments
her less endowed sisters, although they, too, formed
wealthy and prominent relationships.

All three sisters loved to- travel. Julie took the
younger one on many voyages throughout Europe, and
Rosine made regular pilgrimages to Germany to the fa-
mous spas.

While Julie lived the gay, irresponsible life of a Pari-
sian butterfly, her daughter Sarah, a weak, anaemic child,
cursed with a terrific temper, remained on the farm in
Brittany.

When she was nearly two years old she was still in
her "first steps" ; she did not begin to learn to walk until
she was fourteen months old. Her nurse, who had mar-
ried again, had other duties about the farm and could
give scant attention to the little one during the day. In
order to keep her quiet, the nurse got her husband to
build a little chair, in which the baby was fastened with

46 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

a strap. This was then pushed against a table, so that
the child could amuse herself with pieces of coloured
paper the only toys Sarah Bernhardt knew until she
was three years old.

One day the woman set her in the chair as usual but
neglected to fasten the strap, and the baby, leaning for*
ward to catch something, fell from the high chair and
into the wide, Breton fireplace, in which a log fire was
burning. Her screams brought the nurse and her hus-
band running. The nurse picked her up and plunged her
bodily, flaming clothes and all, into a huge tub of milk
which was waiting to be churned.

Doctors were sent for from a neighbouring village and
hasty messages sent to Paris. The only one of the sis-
ters to be found was Rosine, who sent a message to
Julie at Brussels, and herself hurried to Brittany. Four
days later Julie arrived in Baron Larrey's coach, which
had been driven at top speed all the way from Paris.

From this incident grew Sarah's nickname, which re-
mained with her all -her childhood, "Flower-of-the-
Milk." She was three months recovering from the se-
vere burns she had sustained, and until she died she bore
scars to remind her of the accident.

For ever after, Sarah Bernhardt had a horror of fire.
She could not bear even to look at one, and would shiver
and turn pale when she heard the trumpets and bells of
the fire brigade. Yet mother-love conquered this fear
when, nearly twenty years later, her flat took fire and

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 47

she dashed through a barrage of flames to rescue her
own baby boy.

When little Sarah recovered, Julie proposed to the
nurse, now a widow, that she should leave the Breton
farm and live in Paris in a cottage Baron Larrey had
taken on the borders of the Seine, at Neuilly. The nurse
agreed, and a new existence began for the child on the
fringe of the city, where her mother was earning a repu-
tation as a gilded social butterfly.

CHAPTER IV

DURING the year which followed transfer of nurse and
child to Neuilly-sur-Seine Sarah saw her mother but once,
and then merely by chance.

Returning from a gay court party near St Germain
the coach, in which Julie was travelling with a resplendent
personage, the Comte de Tours, broke down just after
it had crossed the bridge over the Seine and reached the
outskirts of Neuilly. The nearest coach-builder was a
mile distant, and while the coachman walked this dis-
tance, Julie bethought herself of the neglected child liv-
ing only a few streets away. So she and the Count
daintily picked their way to the cottage, and found Sarah
revelling in her bi-weekly bath.

This bath was an extraordinary affair, because it took
place in the same tub as the family washing and prob-
ably other washing that the nurse solicited in order to
eke out her income. On the principle of killing two
birds with one stone, the n,urse would make a warm tub
of soap-suds, put the linen to be washed into it, and
then hoist in Baby Sarah !

The sight amused the Count and infuriated Julie, who
gave the nurse a sound scolding. Sarah was hastily

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 49

taken from the tub, dried, clothed and then handed to
her fastidious- mother, who fondled her in a gingerly
way. But the baby failed to recognise the mother who
had sacrificed so little for her sake, and burst into a storm
of tears, pounding the finely-dressed lady with her puny
little fists.

The Count thought it a fine joke, and laughed up-
roariously. "She is just like her mother, Youle!" he
remarked, twirling his fine moustache.

Julie handed her tempestuous child back to the nurse.

"If that is the way she behaves when her mother comes
to see her," she said, "I shall not come again."

She kept her word to such good purpose that, eighteen
months later, when the nurse married for a third time,
and desired to take the child with her to her new home,
letters to Julie's address were returned undelivered. The
ejrrant mother had not even thought it worth her while
to keep her child's nurse informed of her movements.

The nurse's new husband was a concierge, one of those
indispensable people who open the doors of Paris build-
ings, lose letters, clean stairs, quarrel with flat-owners,
and generally make themselves as much of a nuisance as
possible. This particular specimen was a big, upstand-
ing man with sandy hair, about forty years of age, or
ten years younger than his bride.

He was then concierge at number 65, rue de Provenge,
n the heart of Paris, near where the Galeries Lafayette,
ie great stores, now stand. It was a dirigy building,
nostly devoted to commerce, and the concierge occupied

50 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

one room on the first floor. This one room was bed-
room, sitting-room and kitchen combined.

There was only one bed, a big four-poster, jammed
against the window. There was also one kitchen table,
on which he ate his meals ; two chairs in varying stages
of decrepitude; a small coal stove screened from the
bed by a heavy velvet curtain soiled legacy of some
opulent tenant and another small table, on which stood
a wash-basin and pail. When water was wanted it was
necessary to fetch it from a pump in the street.

It was into this sordid environment that little Sarah,
'Tlower-of-the-Milk," now almost five years old, was
brought willy-nilly by her foster-mother. There was no
room to put a cot for the child, so she shared a fraction
of the bed. She was quickly put to work by her new
lord, who soon initiated her into the mysteries of floor-
washing and door-knob polishing, while it was generally
la petite Sarah, when water was wanted, who was com-
missioned to stagger down the stairs with the empty pail
and return with the full one.

Living with two adults in this ill-ventilated, badly-
lighted room the sole window was one about twice the
size of a ship's port-hole and forced to do work which
might well have proved too much for a child twice her
age, it is small wonder that Sarah was frequently ill.

She lost appetite and colour, and grew weak, while
the anaemia, winch the bracing air of the country had
almost cured, returned. Her eyes grew listless and had
large pufis under them, so that neighbours, who pitied

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 51

the child, prophesied that her days would soon be over.

Her only playmate, almost as unhappy as herself, was
another little girl named Titine, the daughter of a work-
ing jeweller, who lived on the floor above; her play-
grounds were the busy streets of Paris ; her language the
argot of the slums. No one dreamed of sending her to
school, which was not then compulsory.

There is very little doubt that the world would never
have known Sarah Bernhardt if this state of affairs had
lasted another year. The child was fast going into tu-
berculosis, and could not even summon strength for the
fits of temper that had distinguished her up till this time.

I have said that her only playmate was Titine, the
daughter of the jeweller, but there was another for a
month or so the son of the butcher at the street corner.

One afternoon the janitor's wife returned from an
errand and heard screams coming from the loge. Has-
tening there she discovered the butcher's son, aged six,
stripped to the waist, and the diminutive Sarah laying
on to him with a strap.

"I am playing at being a Spaniard," she said in ex-
planation, Spaniards having then a great reputation in
France for cruelty. The incident is interesting in the
light of later incidents in her career, when charges of
callousness and cruelty were brought against her. For
myself I have never doubted that a streak of the primi-
tive existed in Sarah, But, unlike others, I believe that
she was the better for it, for out of it grew her single-
mindedness and her will to conquer.

52 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

During all this time Sarah's mother gave no sign of
life, despite repeated efforts on the part of the old nurse
to find her. In fact, the child's board had not been paid
for nearly two years and, with her delicate health, she
was becoming a charge which the couple could ill afford.
Deliverance, from this state of affairs came unexpectedly.
One day Rosine, Sarah's aunt, paid a visit to a neighbour-
ing house. Sarah, who was playing in the courtyard of
the building at the moment her aunt arrived, immediately
recognised her, although the two had not met for more
than a year.

"Xante Rosine! Tante Rosine 1"

The extravagantly dressed woman turned, hardly be-
lieving her ears.

"It is not? why, it is Sarah, the daughter of my sister
Youle!"

"Yes, yes! It is I, Sarah! Oh, take me away take
me away! They suffocate me, these walls always
walls I I cannot see the sky I Take me away ! I want
to see the sky again, and the flowers. . . !"

Sarah's cries had attracted a crowd, and much con-
fused Rosine hurried the child into the concierge's room,
and was there overwhelmed by the old nurse's expla-
nations.

Something seemed to tell Sarah that she was not to be
taken away at that moment.

"Oh, take me with you take me with you! I shall
die here!"

It was the cry of a desperate child fighting for her life,

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 53

and it visibly wrenched at the heart of Tante Rosine.
Yet take her with her? How could she? What
would her friend, the companion whom she lived with
and who paid for her fine gowns and hats, say, if she
brought home this little child of the gutter?

"Well," she conceded, as the woe-begone child clung
convulsively to her skirt, "I will come back to-morrow,
and take you away."

But with that curious intuition that characterises most
children, Sarah sensed that she was about to be aban-
doned for a third time. She flung herself on the bed,
sobbing, as her nurse accompanied her aunt down the
stairs to the street below, where a fine equipage of box-
wood and plush, prancing horses and liveried footmen
was in waiting.

Rosine got into her carriage, dabbing a lace handker-
chief at her eyes. She had a tender heart and was firmly
resolved to write to Youle at once Julie was in London
and make her take her child.

The footman regained his seat, the coachman clucked
to his horses and the equipage moved away. But before
it had gone two feet there was a heartrending wail and
shriek, followed by a chorus of affrighted shouts, and
a body came hurtling past the coach to the pavement.
It was Sarah. The child had attempted to jump from
the tiny first-floor window into the coach as it passed.

When Sarah awoke she found herself in a great, clean
bed, surrounded by kind faces. She was at the home

54 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

of her aunt in the rue St. Honore. She had a double
fracture of her right arm, and a sprained left ankle.

Julie, who was sent for immediately, arrived three days
later, together with numerous other members of Sarah's
family. For the first time in her brief existence, Sarah
found herself a person of importance.

For the next two years little Sarah was an invalid,
capable of walking only a step or two at a time. She
passed this period sitting in a great arm-chair, unable to
move without pain, dreaming childish dreams of splen-
dour for the future.

"Never once," said Sarah in speaking of this period
to me, "did I include in those dreams a suspicion that
I would one day be an actress. I had never seen the
inside of a theatre, and although many actors and
actresses were among the friends constantly in and out
of my mother's home at 22, rue de la Michodiere a
rather meretriciously furnished flat with gilded salons
and musty bedrooms I was shy with them and they
with me, and learned little from their conversation.

a ln fact, the stage and all appertaining to it remained
a deep mystery to me for nearly ten years after my acci-
dent. My actual going on the stage was an accident
or rather the solution of a problem which had worried
my mother almost to death."

How this came about will be described in a later chap-
ter.

At seven years of age, Sarah Bernhardt had so far
recovered that she could walk and move without diffi-

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 55

culty, and there was serious discussion about sending her
to school Her volatile mother, absent for the most part
during Sarah's convalescence, nevertheless resented the
presence of the child in her home as irksome, and chafed
to place her where she would be in good hands and could
do without maternal supervision and attention.

As a matter of fact, at the age of seven Sarah could
neither read nor write, and had never heard of arith-
metic 1

When her mother explained that she was to go to live
in a place where there were hundreds of other little
girls, who were to become her playmates, Sarah was
overjoyed. During the terrible two years when she
could not run about like other children, Sarah had had
no playmates whatever; and, during her airings in her
mother's or her aunt's carriage, had often wistfully
watched other and luckier little girls rolling hoops along
the gravelled paths of the Champs Elysees, or in the
fields which then fringed what is now the Boulevard de
Clichy. She had been an intensely lonely child from her
infancy and could scarcely contain her happiness at the
thought that at last she was to be as other children, and
have little friends with whom she could talk and play as
an equal.

Probably the main reason for sending Sarah away at
this juncture was the fact that Julie was again about to
become a mother.

It may be as well to state here that Julie Bernhardt
was the mother of four children including a boy who

56 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

died. Sarah was the first, Jeanne the second, and
Regine the third. More will be told hereafter concern-
ing these two turbulent sisters of the actress. They
both lived unfortunate lives and died still more unfortu-
nate deaths.

A report of Sarah's parentage that has won consid-
erable credence was published by a weekly Paris news-
paper in 1886, and re-published again as recently as
April 8, 1923, by La Rampe, a Paris theatrical paper.
I quote from the latter :

"Edouard Bernhardt, grandfather of Sarah Bernhardt,
was a Jew. He fulfilled the functions of chief oculist
to the Court of Austria. He came to St. Aubin-du-
Corbier, in Brittany, and there married the Marquise
de la Thieule du Petit-Bois de la Vieuville, by whom he
had four daughters and one son: Julie, Rosine, Agathe,
Vitty and Edouard. The Marquise died and Edouard
Bernhardt married, secondly; Madame Van Berinth, who
had been governess to his children. Rosine and Julie
(mother of Sarah Bernhardt) ran away to Havre, where
they obtained work as saleswomen in a confectionery
establishment Their father sent for them, and they
fled to London. Shortly afterwards they returned to
Havre, where Julie lived as the wife of a man named
Morel, a ship-builder. They had fourteen children, of
whom Sarah, born at Paris, 125, Faubourg St. Honore,
on October 23, 1840, was one."

This seems circumstantial but it is absolutely inac-

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^fep

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\K\;

A

Sketch of Therese Meilhan (afterwards Mme. Pierre Berton)
by Georges Clairin, 1881,

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 57

curate. I give it here, together with the evidence to
contravert it, because so many people believe the above
to be the true story of Sarah's birth.

The rebutting evidence consists, first, in Sarah's own
denial, which was published almost immediately after the
story itself, and, secondly, in the fact that the certificate
of her baptism, in which the truth was certainly given,
states that she was then living (twelve years later) in the
rue St. Honore not that she was born in that street;
and the date is given in this certificate as September 25,
1844, not October 23, 1840, as is claimed by La Rampe;
that her father was not "Monsieur Morel," but George
Bernhardt; and that her mother was not "Julie Bern-
hardt" but Julie Van Hard.

And, as I have said, Julie had only four children, not
fourteen I

The same paper (La Rampe) says- that Sarah was
baptised at the age of eight years. When she was eight,
Sarah was still a Jewess and at the school. of which we
shall shortly give an account. Sarah was baptised,
under the name of Rosine, five years later, at the Grand-
champs Converft, Versailles.

When she was seven, then, and five months before
Jeanne was born, Sarah was taken to Madame Fressard's
school, at 1 8, rue Boileau, Auteuit. The building still
exists, but it has been turned into a private sanatorium.

The journey to Auteuil, which one can now make from
the rue St. Honore in twenty minutes by underground
railway or in half an hour by tramway or motor-bus, was

58 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

then quite a formidable affair. Paris was left behind at
the Avenue Montaigne, and from there the way lay along
the banks of the smiling Seine, with only a roadside
estaminet bordering what is now one of the most aristo-
cratic streets of all Paris. It took over an hour for the
coach to reach the rue Boileau, in the little village of
Auteuil. Sarah, needless to say, was enchanted with the
journey and with the happy prospects ahead of her.

It was quite a ceremony, the installation of Sarah in her
ntfw home. Besides Julie and Aunt Rosine, there was a
General and another man, who represented Sarah's father,
then absent in Lisbon. They were very pompous and im-
portant, and inclined to exaggerate the wealth that was
so evident in the rich trappings of Aunt Rosine's coach.

After much talk and negotiation, during which the
party gathered around a bottle of wine opened by
Madame Fressard, Sarah was formally entered on the
books of the school as a pupil.

Amongst other things Julie insisted on presenting
Madame Fressard with eight large jars of cold cream,
with which she gave orders that Sarah was to be mas-
saged every morning. Another order concerned Sarah's
mass of curly hair. It was not to be cut or trimmed in
any way, but to be carefully combed night and morning.
And when Madame Fressard ventured a slight protest
at all these injunctions, Julie only waved her hand with
a large gesture, saying:

"You will be paid her father is wealthy!"

The exact sum contributed by George Bernhardt

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 59

towards Sarah's maintenance was four thousand francs
annually.

During all the conversation that attended her installa-
tion as a pupil at the Auteuil school, Sarah remained mute,
too shy to say a word.

"What a stupid child !"> said Aunt Rosine, who was
years before she gained a very high opinion of Sarah.

"Naturally stupid, I'm afraid!" sighed her mother,
languidly.

. Only Madame Fressard, the stranger in the groU^
came to the forlorn little creature's aid:

"Well, she has your eyes so intelligent, madame!"
she said.

And with this the party left in their flamboyant coach,
each scrupulously kissing the child farewell at the gate,
and each, without any doubt at all, exceedingly glad to
be rid of her.

Sarah was at last at school.

CHAPTER V

IN later years it was fairly well known amongst theal
rical people that Sarah was subject to "stage fright.'
The only occasion, however, on which nerves actualb
stopped her performance, occurred at Auteuil school
when she was eight years and three months old. Sara!
told this story to me on one memorable day at Vill(
d'Avray, when, during a fete given by the Grand Duke
Peter of Russia, we had stolen away from the crowd into
Bellevue woods. I have never seen the incident referred
t/in print

"I had been at the school a little more than a year,"
Sarah told me, "when it was decided to give a perform-
ance of Clo tilde , a play for children, which concerned a
little girl's adventures in fairyland. Stella Colas, after-
wards the wife of Pierre de Corvin, was cast for the name
part Another little fair girl (whose name I have for-
gotten) was to play the role of Augustine, the partner of
Clotilde. And I was cast for the part of the Queen of
the Fairies.

"At the rehearsals we rehearsed all the winter
everything went well. My part was not an important
one, but it involved some pretty realistic acting in the
second act, when the Queen of the Fairies dies of mor-
tification on hearing Clotilde affirm that the fairies do

,60

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 61

not really exist. This was the first 'death scene' in which
I ever acted.

"I wore wings, of course, and many rehearsals were
necessary before, the stage-manager, who was our kinder-
garten teacher, could get me to fall without breaking
them. Finally I learned the part, and managed to do it
to the entire satisfaction of everyone.

"When the great night came, we were, of course, all
very nervous, myself most of all, for my mother and two
aunts had written that they would be present accom-
panied by no less a personage than the Due de Morny,
then considered to he the power behind Napoleon the
Third's throne.

"Before the curtain went up, my knees were knocking
together and I felt a wild desire to fly. I Cried to run
away and hide, in fact, but the teacher found me, petted
me and made me promise to go on with the part

"I had nothing to do until the end of the first act,
when Clotilde and Augustine fall asleep at the foot of a
great tree and dream of the fairies. My part was to
descend from the tree, assisted by unseen wires, float to
the middle of the stage, and then pronounce the words :
{ 0n demande la reine des reves? Me void!' ('They
want the Queen of Dreams? Here I am!')

"Clotilde and Augustine fell asleep, and trembling all
over I floated down and advanced to the front of the
stage. We had no regular* footlights, and everyone in
the little auditorium could be distinguished from the
stage.

62 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

1 Instead of pronouncing the sentence about the Queen
of Dreams, I stood tongue-tied, unable to utter a syllable.
Several times my mouth opened, and I tried to speak, but
the words would not come. All the time I was anxiously
searching the audience for familiar faces. It was only
when I saw none, and realised that my mother was not
present, that I managed to stutter :

"'On d-d-dem-m-m-mande la reine d-des reves?
M*m-me void!'

"The last word I uttered in one breathless syllable;
then rushed off the stage to the accompaniment of much
amused applause.

"In the wings of the tiny stage I was met by the prin-
cipal of the school, who, affecting not to notice my em-
barrassment, complimented me warmly on my 'success,'
and then told me that my mother and her party had not
arrived. This, more than anything else, gave me the
necessary courage to go through with my part.

"Even in later years when I was on the regular stage,
the presence of my mother in an audience invariably
made me so nervous that I could hardly play. She was
p ver the harshest critic I had !

"The second act proceeded fairly well, since it was
chiefly a dance by the fairies, with myself in the centre,
wielding a mystic sceptre. All I had to do was wave the
sceptre, and the fairies would bow as it was raised and
lowered. Finally came the big moment when Clotilde
awakens, and says: Tshaw, I was dreaming; there are
no such things as fairies ! J

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 63

"With these words I was supposed to stop and wave
my sceptre indignantly, on which all the other fairies dis-
appeared, leaving me alone with Clotilde and the sleep-
ing Augustine. Clotilde advances to me and asks:
Who are you? 1 To my reply 'I am the Queen of the
Fairies,' she answers scornfully: 'You are a fraud, for
there are no such things as fairies.'

"When she utters these words I stagger and then,
moaning and clasping my hand to my heart, sink slowly
to the ground. Clotilde, agonised, asks : 'What is the
matter?' and I reply: 'You have killed me, for when a
little girl says she doesn't believe in the fairies, she mor-
tally wounds their Queen.'

"We had got as far as my reply *I am the Queen,'
when suddenly I perceived, in the front row of the audi-
ence, six beautifully-gowned ladies and two gentlemen,
who had not been there before. In trepidation I searched
their faces, standing stock-still and not listening to Clo-
tilde's scornful reply. Yes! There was my mother,
and there were my two aunts, as I had feared I

"All my stage-fright came back to me. And, instead
of sinking to the ground as I was supposed to do, I burst
out sobbing and ran off the stage, in the centre of which
I left poor Clotilde standing, a forlorn little girl of ten.
Instantly there was a storm of laughter and applause.
Unable to stand it, Clotilde too ran off the stage, and
the curtain was hastily rung down.

"Soon I was surrounded with teachers and elder girls,
some abusing me, others begging me to finish the play-

64 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

But it was useless. I could act no more and the play,
for lack of an understudy, was over. I was hustled, a
weeping and very bedraggled-looking fairy, to the dormi-
tory, where I was left alone with my thoughts.

"I would have given worlds to have been left alone for
the remainder of the day! But it was not to be, for
scarcely fifteen minutes passed before the door opened
and my mother appeared, followed by my aunts and
their whole party 1

"I could have prayed for the floor to open and swallow
me! I hid my head in the bedclothes, like an ostrich,
and affected not to hear the words addressed to me.
Finally I felt firm hands on my shoulders and I was
dragged forth, weeping violently.

"If mother had only taken me in her arms and kissed
and comforted me 1 I was only a tiny child, not yet nine
years old and still constitutionally weak, with high-strung
nerves. But she stood there holding me and looking
coldly into my tear-filled eyes.

" 'And to think,' she said icily, 'that this is a child of
mine !

" 'One would never think it,' said Aunt Rosine, sternly.
"All were hard, unsympathetic, seeming not to realise
that they were bullying a child whose nerves were at the
breaking-point and who was in reality almost dead from
exhaustion. I broke into another storm of sobs and,
kicking myself free from my mother, ran to the bed and
threw myself upon it in despair. With some further
unkindly remarks from my mother and aunts, the party

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 65

finally left, but as he reached the door the Due de Morny,
the last to go out, turned and retraced the few steps to
my bed.

" 'Never mind, my little one," he whispered. 'You
will show them all how to act one of these days, won't
you?'

"His comforting words, however, had come too late.
I had sobbed myself into a fever and the next morning
the doctor had to be called. For several days I was
kept in bed and forbidden to see the other girls. Through
these long four days I kept thinking constantly of my
mother. Why had she been so cruel, so cold to her
daughter? I knew that another child had been born
the year before, and with childish intuition I hit upon
the right answer. Mother loved the baby more than
she loved me if, indeed, she loved me at all. I was
inconsolable at the thought. How lonely a vista the
coming years opened to my immature imagination I
Scores of times I sobbed out aloud: 'I would rather be
dead! I would rather be dead!'

"Alas! this was not the last time that my mother's
chilly behaviour towards me threw me into a paroxysm
of misery resulting in illness. I never grew callous to
her disapproval of me; her cutting criticisms had always
the power to wound me to the heart. And yet I loved
her I More, I adored her! Poor, lonely, friendless
child that I was and had ever been, my starved heart cried
out to the one human being whose love I had the right

66 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

to claim, and who responded to my caresses sometimes
almost as if I had been a stranger."

This was the only occasion on which Sarah Bernhardt
ever bewailed to me or to anyone else, her mother's lack
of affection for her. She was scrupulously loyal to both
her parents, and on the rare occasions when she men-
tioned them, it was always in terms of genuine love and
respect.

During her two years in Auteuil, Sarah's mother went
to see her only three times, and her father only once.
Her father's visit took place at the end of the first year,
in December, 1851. It was the first time, to her recol-
lection, that Sarah had ever seen him. They met in the
head-mistress's office, and the occasion must have been
replete with drama.

"I was called from study one afternoon about three
o'clock," said Sarah, "and taken to Mme. Fressard's
bureau. I found her waiting for me at the door with a
peculiar expression on her face, and in the arm-chair
near the fireplace I saw a very well-dressed man of about
thirty, with a waxed moustache.

" { Ma cherie,' said Madame Fressard, 'here is your
father come to see you.'

"Mon fere! So this was the mysterious personage
whose wish and order governed my life ; this the parent
of whom my mother was apparently so much in fear, and
yet whom she seldom saw; this the stranger who was re-
sponsible for my being!

"I advanced shyly and gave my face to be kissed, an

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 67

operation which my father performed twice, on both
sides, his moustache giving me a prickly sensation on my
cheeks.

" Why, she is growing into quite a little beauty!' he
said to Madame Fressard, holding me so that he could
look at me closely. Then he asked me many questions :
Was I happy ? Was I well ? Had I playmates ? What
had I learned? Could I read and write? and spell?
: and do sums?

"The interrogation lasted ten minutes and then my
father took his tall grey hat and gloves, and prepared to
leave.

" 'We will leave her with you for a little while longer,
madame,' he said to Madame Fressard, while I listened
with all my ears.

" 'I am going for a long journey and do not expect
to return for eight or ten months. When I come back
we will consider what is best to be done.'

"Kissing me again, he took his departure and Madame
Fressard drew me to her.

" *I should think you would love your father very
very much,' she said. 'He is such a handsome man!'

" 'How can I love him?' I replied wonderingly. *I
have never seen him before.' "

A year later Bernhardt had not returned from South
America, but he sent Julie a letter, in which he urged
that Sarah should be taken from Madame Fressard' s
preparatory school and sent to a convent; he suggested
Grandchamps Convent, at Versailles. He had written

68 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

to the Superior, he said, explaining the circumstances,
rand the latter had replied that if little Sarah was spon-
sored by one other gentleman, preferably one in Paris,
the matter could be arranged. Julie at once asked the
Due de Morny, who agreed to sponsor the child.

In the same letter Bernhardt said that he had made
his will, in which he left 20,000 francs to Sarah, pro-
viding she had married before the age of twenty-one.

"I do not intend my daughter," he wrote coldly, "to
follow the example of her mother."

Until she was twenty-one the income from the 20,000
francs was to pay for Sarah's schooling. Her mother
was to pay for her clothes.

Although the letter said that Bernhardt did not expect
to return to France for several months, he actually caught
the next boat to that which carried his letter, and ar-
rived in Paris just after Sarah had been withdrawn from
the school at Auteuil.

This had not been effected without a storm of protest
on Sarah's part. The two years had passed happily at
Madame Fressard's, and she feared the future, sur-
rounded by strange and cold relatives.

Julie had gone to London, and it was Aunt Rosine
who went to the school to fetch the child.

Sarah delighted to tell of this departure from the
school.

"I hated to leave," she told me, "and it was two hours
before they could succeed in dressing me. Once this was
accomplished, I flew at Tante Rosine like a young fury,
and spoiled all her elaborate coiffure.

"She was furious and, bundling me into her coach,
commanded me to keep silent But I would not, and
throughout the journey in the jolting carriage from
Auteuil to 6, rue de la Chaussee d'Antin, where my aunt
and my mother owned a joint flat, I tore at her hair
and kicked at her legs, and otherwise performed like the
disgraceful young ragamuffin I really was.

"I was no better on our arrival at the flat, and kept
the whole household in an uproar until I heard the sudden
announcement that my father had arrived ! Then I col-
lapsed and had to be carried to bed, where I lost con-
sciousness for three hours. When I awoke, it was to
find a doctor and nurse installed and an array of medi-
cine bottles on the table. I felt utterly exhausted and I
heard Doctor Monod, the great physician who had been
called by the Due de Morny, tell my father that I was
in an extremely delicate condition and that my recovery
depended upon my being kept absolutely quiet 'Above
all,' said he, c she is not to be "crossed." * "

Sarah's father often visited her during her three days'
convalescence from the fever brought on by a fit of tem-
per, and on two occasions he brought with him Rossini,
who lived in the same street and was an intimate friend.

Julie had been informed of Sarah's illness, but was
herself ill at Haarlem, in Holland, where she had just
arrived from London. It was a fortnight before she
reached Paris, and in the meantime Sarah stayed at
Neuilly, in the home of another and married aunt whose
husband afterwards became a monk.

When Julie finally arrived, a dinner was arranged to

70 The Real SaraK Bernh'ardt

take place the night before Sarah was taken to the Con-
vent Edouard Bernhardt was present. This was the
last time Sarah saw her father, for he died shortly after-
wards in Italy.

Sarah's life at the Convent has been more or less faith-
fully described in her own Memoirs, and I shall not dilate
on it here. She was expelled three times the last time
for good. She was baptised at the age of twelve under
the name of Rosine, and from then on dated her deter-
mination to become a nun. For two 'years she was
fanatical on the subject of religion, but this did not pre-
vent her fits of temper from breaking out and disturbing
the whole school.

"All my time at the Convent I was haunted by the
desire to be a nun," she said to me once. "The beau-
tiful life of the sisters who taught us at Grandchamps,
their almost unearthly purity, their tranquil tempers, all
made a tremendous impression on me. I dearly desired
to take the vows and, had it been left to me, Sarah Bern-
hardt would have become Sister Rosine. But I doubt
whether I would have remained a nun for life I

"I was never genuinely religious. It was the glamour
and mystery and, above all, the tranquillity surrounding
the life of a cloistered nun that attracted me. I should
have run away from the Convent before many weeks."

Young Sarah was tremendously high-spirited and con-
stantly in trouble. The nuns were always sending de-
spairing reports to her mother.

'Once, during a presentation of prizes, she pretended

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 7*

to faint and acted the part so realistically that even the
Superior was deceived and believed her pupil to be dead.
It gave her such a shock that the poor lady was ill for
days. Sarah was sent to her bedroom in disgrace.

"I spent the time reading forbidden books and eating
bonbons that the concierge had smuggled in to me," she
said, in telling me the story.

On another occasion she organised a flight from the
Convent In the dead of night she and six other girls
of a similarly adventurous disposition climbed down torn
and knotted sheets from their dormitory windows to the
ground. Clambering over the high wall surrounding
the Convent grounds, they took to their heels and were
caught only at noon the next day, when in the act of
throwing stones at horses of the Royal Dragoons.

For this exploit she was expelled, but was allowed to
return on her promise never to give trouble again.

Scarcely two months afterwards, however, she was
discovered by the mother-superior on top of the Convent
wall, imitating the Bishop of Versailles, whom the day
before she had seen conducting the Burial Service at a
graveside. Expelled again!

On still another occasion she was caught flirting with
a young soldier, who had tossed his cap over the wall.
When the nuns tried to catch her, she climbed the wall
and stayed there for hours until long after dark. On
this occasion she caught a chill which nearly resulted in
her death, and when she had recovered she left the
Convent for good.

CHAPTER VI

AT the age of fifteen Sarah was a thin, weedy, shock-
headed girl, about five feet tall, but undeveloped. Her
complexion was pale and dark rings under her eyes told
the story of uncoriquered anaemia. She had a chronic
cough that would shake her thin body to paroxysms. She
was extremely subject to colds and chills, and the slightest
indisposition would send her to bed with fever. Doctors
shook their heads over her and predicted that she would
die of consumption before reaching the age of twenty.

Her anaemia gave to her face a species of sombre
beauty which was enlivened by the extraordinary play
of expression in her eyes as she talked. Her features
reflected every change of mood, and her moods were
many. Judged by her face alone, she was not so much
beautiful as striking. Character fairly leapt at one when
she spoke.

Her character was a curious composite of morbidity,
affection, talent and wilfulness. Her mother and her
governess, Mile, de Brabender, a probationer nun, were
often reduced to despair by her temper, which seemed to
grow worse as she became older. At other times, but
more rarely, she was tractable to the point of docility.

Sarah's first visit to the theatre was to the Opera-
Comique. This great event occurred when she was

72

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 73

slowly recovering from the illness which followed her
expulsion from the Convent at Grandchamps. One day
she was at her music lesson with Mile. Clarisse, when
her mother's maid came to say that her presence was
desired in the salon. There she found her mother, the
Due de Morny, and her younger sister Jeanne, who was
never far from her mother's side when the latter was in
Paris.

Putting his hand on her curly head the Duke said:

"We have a great surprise for you."

"A wonderful surprise," added her mother.

Sarah clapped her hands excitedly. "I know I
knowl You are going to let me enter the Convent I
am to be a nun!"

She was overwhelmed with joy; never doubted but
that her fondest dream was to be made true.

"What is this?" demanded the Duke in amazement.
"Our beautiful little Sarah wants to be a nun? And why
do you wish to condemn yourself to that living death,
may I ask?"

Living death! To the child, whose memories of the
Convent were so recent, the life of a nun was a living
joy a joy of service, sacrifice and peace. To her rest-
less, turbulent, almost exotic temperament the thought
of the calm, well-ordered existence of the tranquil religie-
uses was a beautiful one, a sacred memory. She could
not bear the harsh laughter with which her mother
greeted the suggestion.

"Expelled from a convent and wants to be a nun!"

74 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

said Julie, scornfully. She could never bring herself to
believe that this amazingly complex creature was her own
child.

"Hush!" commanded the Duke, frowning. "Now,
my little one, my question is not answered. Why do you
wish to be a nun?"

Sarah looked fearlessly at her mother's protector.

"The doctors say I am soon to die I have heard them
talk," she said. "I would like to die with my soul dedi-
cated to God."

To Julie, who was still a Jewess, this was cause for
further laughter ; but the Duke, a man of much sentiment
and some honour, was much affected.

"Nonsense!" he said. "You are not going to die for
many years! The doctors are fools! We shall dis-
charge them for idle talking. . . . No, my little one,
the great surprise is not what you thought We are
going to take you to the Opera-Comique to see a play."

Instead of the stammered thanks he expected, Sarah
began to cry.

"I do not want to go to the Opera-Comique I" she
cried, stamping her foot. "I won't go ! Mother Saint-
Sophie (the superior at the Convent) said that the
theatre was wicked. I do not want to be wicked: I want
to be a nun!"

Threats and persuasion were both necessary before
Sarah consented to don the new gown her mother had
purchased for her and accompany her parent and the
Duke to the latter's box at the Opera-Comique.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 75

This theatre was then in the Place du Chatelet, and
little did the child dream, as she entered it, that twenty-
five years later she herself would lease it from the city
and call it the "Theatre Sarah Bernhardt" which is its
name to-day. Thus, the last theatre in which she acted
was also that in which she saw her first play*

Sarah fell an immediate victim to the theatre. The
piece she saw that night Sarah herself did not remember
its name held her enthralled. It was necessary for her
companions to drag her away after the curtain had fallen
on the last act.

She had been transported to a new world, an unreal
sphere of delight. For days, for weeks thereafter she
spoke of little else. She besieged her mother with de-
mands to be taken to the theatre again. The latter,
however, was too wrapped up in her own pleasure-loving
life to take much heed in the desires of her wilful
daughter.

One day Sarah went off to the art school, where she
was learning to paint her ambition to become a nun was
almost forgotten now, and she would spend feverish hours
In preparation for the career she was convinced was ahead
of her as a great portrait-painter and did not return
until the next morning.

All that night searchers hunted throughout the city
for the truant; the police were informed and it was even
suggested that the Seine should be dragged, for it was
remembered that to come home from the art school,

76 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

which it was ascertained she had left at the usual hour,
it was necessary for her to cross the Pont Neuf .

At nine o'clock the next morning a tired, sleepy and
very dirty Sarah returned to her mother's flat and, in
reply to a storm of questions and reproaches from her
almost frantic mother, explained that she had spent the
night in the Opera-Comique.

She had gone there direct from her art school and had
succeeded in entering the theatre unobserved. Hiding
under a seat in one of the galleries, she had waited until
the play began and had then appropriated a chair. After
the play, seized with panic, she was afraid to go out with
the rest of the audience and had hidden herself again,
only leaving when the doors were opened to the cleaners
in the morning.

After that the Duke gave her regular tickets for the
theatre, and she saw many plays. Frequently she would
visit the same theatre a dozen times, learn several of the
parts by heart and surprise her friends by reciting them.

It was at this period of her life that Sarah began to
have friends of the opposite sex, but she assured me that
she loved none of them.

"I had no foolishness of that kind in my head!" she
told me on one occasion. "My mother's house was
always full of men, and the more I saw of them the less
I liked them.

"I was not* a very companionable child. I had few
girl friends and fewer male acquaintances, but these latter
were assiduous in their attempts to make me like them.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 77

"The first man who asked me to marry him was a
wealthy tanner's son, a young fellow of twenty who was
earning forty francs a week in his father's establishment,
but who expected to be rich one day.

"His father used to frequent my mother's house and
one day he brought his son with him. I was sent for
to complete the party and, though I was haughty and
kept the young fellow at a distance, I could see that I
had made a conquest.

"He came again and again, and would waylay me on
my journey to and from the art school, insisting on carry-
ing my books. I did not dislike him, for he was a hand-
some, earnest young man, but neither did I like him
particularly; and when he capped his attentions by asking
me to marry him I laughed in his face. He went away
vowing revenge.

"That night my mother came into my bedroom and
asked me whether the tanner had not proposed that day.

" Tes, mother,' I said.

" 'And you accepted him?'

"I gave her a look of horror. 'Accept him?' I cried.
'But no, of course I did not accept him ! I do not love
him that is one reason '

" 'It is a poor reason,' said my mother angrily. 'Do
you suppose I wish you on my hands for ever? Are
you never going to marry? Your sisters are growing up
and soon they will marry and you will be left, an ugly
vieille fillet Love always comes after marriage 1'

" 'I do not care,' I persisted, 'I will not marry your

78 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

tanner 1 He has large ears and his teeth are bad and
he cannot talk. I will not marry him, and if he comes
here again I shall slap his face!'

"My mother was angrier than I had ever seen her.
'Very well, then, you shall do as you like ! I wash my
hands of you!' she exclaimed, and left me.

"I burst into a storm of tears and cried half the night.
What a lonely child I was! My only friends were
Madame Guerard, who was under the domination of my
mother, and Mile, de Brabender, a timid soul, who would
fondle and talk to me affectionately when we were alone,
but who was afraid to open her mouth in the presence of
my lovely mother."

The tanners father and son ceased to frequent the
Van Hard house, and for a long while Julie did not
speak to her daughter except formally. To make up for
it, she was tremendously and ostentatiously affectionate
with her two other daughters, Jeanne and Regine, who
had been born four years previously.

Regine had a childhood somewhat similar to that of
Sarah ; that is to say, she was bundled from here to there,
never nursed by her mother, alternately the recipient of
cuffs and kisses, and from the age of three left pretty
much to her own sweet devices. It is not to be wondered
at that she grew into a perfect terror of a child.

At the time of which we are writing now, Regine was
forbidden the reception rooms of the house, and spent
most of her time in Sarah's room. Sarah became her

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 79

nurse and teacher, and this relationship continued until,
fourteen years later, Regine died.

Julie Van Hard had become a fashionable personage
in Paris, owing to her relationship with the Due de
Morny, who was then one of the most powerful men in
France. The Duke kept her plentifully supplied with
money, and her gowns were the rage of Paris.

Beautiful, of commanding stature, her glossy reddish-
gold hair without a streak of grey in it, Julie was an idol
to be worshipped by the youthful dilettantes of the gay
city. No reception, no first night at a theatre, was
complete without the presence of Julie Van Hard.

Dressmakers besieged her to wear their gowns for
nothing, in return for the advertisement she gave them.
It was Julie Van Hard, mother of Sarah Bernhardt,
who launched the famous Second Empire style of tightly-
wound sleeves, with lace cuffs, square decollete and draped
gowns with long trains. She was a great coquette, and
almost certainly the Due de Morny was not the only
recipient of her favors.

Julie Van Hard's home was- spacious, and was invari-
ably filled with visitors. There was a dinner or an
entertainment of some kind every night Gathered in
the two gorgeously-decorated salons one would see such
people as Sarah's two aunts, Rosine Berendt and Hen-
riette Faure ; Paul Regis, who stood as her godfather at
Sarah's baptism; General Polhes, an old friend of Julie's
and godfather of Regine; Madame de Guerard, Count
de Larry, Due de Morny, Count de Castelnau, Albert

8o The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Prudhomme, Viscomte de Noue, Comte de Larsan, Comte
de Charaix, General de la Thurmeliere, Augustus Levy
the playwright, Vicomte de Gueyneveau, and many others.

Sarah seldom appeared at the parties in which these
people figured. Their activities did not interest her.
She had refused to continue with her piano studies, to the
great disappointment of her mother, who was an ac-
complished pianiste.

"I have always hated the piano I" Sarah told me once
in, 1890. "I think it is because Mile. Clarisse, my
teacher, used to rap me on the fingers with a little cane
she carried to mark the tempo. Whenever I hit a false
note, down would come the cane, and then I would fly
into a fury, charge the poor lady like a small tigress and
try to pull her hair out. She did not remain to teach
me very long and she was never replaced!"

The next candidate to Sarah's hand was a worthy
glove-maker, named Trudfeau. He was wealthy, as
wealth was counted ttien, and while not precisely the
son-in-law Julie would have wished, he would doubtless
have been welcome enough in the family had he succeeded
in breaking down the barriers Sarah had erected before
her lieart

Sarah's chief objection to Trudeau was that he was
too fat. Then, again, he was smooth-shaven, and it was
accounted very ugly in those days not to have a moustache.
Clean-shaven men, on entering a theatre, would often
receive a jeering reception from the audience. The
hirsute fashion of that period was long side-whiskers, a

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 81

short, double-pointed beard, and a pointed, waxed
moustache.

Julie did not urge her daughter to marry Trudeau.
She probably knew that any such effort would have been
doomed to failure from the start. Trudeau, however,
laid determined siege to the young girl for several
months, during which he sent her, among other expensive
gifts, a brooch of the sort that was afterwards known as
a u la Valliere." This brooch was among those recently
spld by auction in Paris.

3 all his many proposals of marriage, however, Sarah
turned a deaf ear. She would taunt him about his- figure,
which was short and broad, and above all she would jeer
a"his lack of a moustache.

Never will I marry a man who cannot grow hair on
his face I" she once declared.

He persisted, until one day Sarah called him a "fat
old pig" and threw the contents of a glass of champagne
in his face. Then he accepted his conge, and went out
of Sarah's life for ever.

Following Trudeau came a chemist, who had a shop
at the corner of the Boulevard and the rue de la
Michodiere. He had been captivated by the red-haired
long-legged youngster who used to come to him to have
prescriptions filled. I do not recall the name of this man,
but I know that when Sarah refused him he consoled
himself less than a month later by marrying a widow.
Years later Sarah broke a parasol over his head, when

82 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

he refused to promise not to supply her sister Jeanne
with morphine.

After that a succession of young men unsuccessfully
petitioned for her hand. In a space of two years she
had nearly a dozen proposals, all of which she refused
with equal disdain. She was becoming a noteworthy
character in Paris herself, but she, the child, was of
course eclipsed by the brilliant beauty of her mother.

These suitors came from all classes and conditions of
society. At least one the Vicomte de Larsan, a young
fop whose father was a frequenter of Julie's house
was of noble birth and heir to a considerable fortune.
He was twelity-two years of age, and when he asked her
to marry him, Sarah slapped his face.

I had many long talks with Sarah about these early
romantic episodes. She loved to repeat reminiscences
of her girlhood and she had an astounding memory.

As far back as 1892, she told me that in her life she
had received more than a thousand proposals of marriage,
and that she could remember the name and the date of
every one of them !

I was curious about these thousand proposals of
marriage, and often tried to get her to give me the
names. But she said that to do so might cause harm
to some of the men concerned, many of whom were then
happily married, and had children. She told me of many
episodes, however, in which such secrecy was not neces-
sary, and these episodes will be found in detail later in
this book.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 83

"In my teens I cared nothing for men they disgusted
me!" she said. "I was called a great little beauty, and
men used to kneel at my feet and swear that they would
jump in the Seine if I refused them. I invariably told
them to go and do so 1

"I was indifferent to all men. My mother's flat at
22, rue de la Michodiere, which had been beautifully
furnished by the Due de Moray, was full of men visitors
from early afternoon until late at night. I would keep
out of their way as much as possible, and once I ran
away for three days, because one of my mother's
admirers persisted in making revolting proposals to me.

"Finally I returned one day from the painting school

and found my mother and the servant out and P

installed in the salon. Before I could escape, he had
seized me and covered me with kisses. They were the
first love-kisses I had ever received, and I was not to
give one for years afterwards

"I struggled violently, bit him on the chin and scratched
his face frightfully, but I was a weak child and he would
have overpowered me eventually had not the door
opened and my mother, followed by the Due de Morny,
come in. Neighbours had heard my screams and were
congregated outside the door. My mother was white
with passion.

"The Duke challenged P to a duel in secret, his

rank preventing him from making the affair a public

one. The duel was never fought, however, for P

left that night for his home near Arcachon, and a few

84 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

months later I heard he had been killed in a coaching
accident near Tours.

"The Vicomte de Larsan was the most persistent

suitor, after P , and he was only a boy. I could not

bear the sight of him, with his rouged cheeks, his scented
hands, his powdered hair and his shirts covered with,
expensive lace. He used to wait outside the house for
hours until I came out, and would make fervent declara-
tions of love in the street. I grew to hate him, and I
told him so I

"But at that time I hated nearly all men, except the
Due de Morny. That nobleman was my mother's most
faithful protector, and he gave her large sums, which
helped to pay for my education and my art lessons. He
used to predict a great future for me. Not only (fid he
stand sponsor for me for the Versailles convent but also
procured my entrance into the Conservatoire.

"Many people in those days thought that I was the
Duke's natural daughter, and the legend has persisted.
It was not true, though, for when I was born my mother
was in exceedingly humble circumstances, and she did
not meet the Duke a meeting which changed her for-
tunes until several years later."

CHAPTER VII

THE first press notice that Sarah Bernhardt ever received
was published in the Mercure de Paris in October, 1860,
when she was sixteen years old. Curiously enough it did
not concern her histrionic talent then just beginning to
develop but related to a painting entitled " Winter in
the Champs Elysees," with which Sarah had won the
first prize at the Colombier Art School in the rue de
Vaugirard.

Sarah gave me the clipping to copy it was among her
most prized possessions and, translated, it read as
follows :

" Among the remarkable candidates for admission to
the Beaux Arts should be mentioned a young Parisienne
of sixteen years, named Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt,
who is a pupil at Mile. Gaucher's class in the Colombier
School. Mile. Bernhardt exhibits an extraordinary
talent for one so young and her picture 'Winter in the
Champ Elysees,' with which she has won the first prize
for her class, is distinguished for its technical perfection.
Rarely have we hkd the pleasure of welcoming into the
Beaux Arts a young artist of similar promise, and there
can be no doubt that very soon Mile. Bernhardt will be

85

86 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

classed as one of our greatest painters and thus win
glory for herself and her country."

The painting in question was bought by an American
friend of Sarah's some forty years later. I do not know
how much was paid, but other early paintings of hers,
which have sold privately during the past twenty years,
have brought very large prices indeed.

My mention of this first press criticism of Sarah's
work brings to mind the day she brought me, a little girl,
into the library at her house n, Boulevard Malsherbes,
and showed me four fat volumes each filled with news-
paper clippings, and another one only just begun. On
a chair was stacked a collection of envelopes each dated,
containing other clippings, and these Sarah showed me
how to paste in the book. It was a great honour for me.

Later in the afternoon Maurice Bernhardt, then a
small boy, came in and helped me, but I remember that
he was more of a nuisance than a help, and he ended by
tipping over the paste-pot and making a mess which I
had to clean up.

When she died Sarah possessed many of these fat
volumes of press-clippings, from every country in the
world. It was said that if all the newspaper notices
she received during her career could have been placed
end to end, they would have reached around the world,
and that if all the photographs printed of her could have
been stacked in a pile, they would have reached higher
than the Eiffel Tower.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 87

Somebody even calculated once that the name Sarah
Bernhardt alone had been printed so often in newspapers
and magazines, and on bills, programmes and the like,
that the letters used would bridge the Atlantic, while
the ink would be sufficient to supply the needs of The
Times for two months !

I cannot vouch for this, but there can be no doubt
whatever that, if the number of times one's name is
printed is a criterion, Sarah Bernhardt was by far the
most famous person who has ever lived. For nearly
sixty years never a day went by without the words "Sarah
Bernhardt" being printed somewhere or other. When
she returned from her American tour in 1898, the press-
clippings she brought back with her filled a large trunk.

The interesting point in all this is that only a very few
writers concerned themselves with her painting and
sculpture. Out of all the millions of articles written
about her, a bare sixty or seventy concern her capabilities
outside the theatre.

If little was known of Sarah the artist, still less was
known of Sarah the woman. That is why this book is
written.

Thousands of people who loved her as an actress never
knew that she had been married ! Those who knew that
she was a Jewess born were few indeed. Nothing was
known of her intimate home life, of her affaires du cceur,
of h'er attempts at authorship, of the many plays she
either wrote or revised.

In all the multitudinous clippings in that wonderful

88 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

collection of hers, how many reveal the fact that Sarah
Bernhardt was a certificated nurse ? How many persons
know that she once studied medicine and wa$ highly
proficient in anatomy? How many know that she was
a vegetarian, and often said that her long life was due
to her horror of meat? How many know that, for
many long years, until infirmity intervened, Sarah Bern-
hardt, the Jewess born, was a practising Catholic, seldom
missing her Sunday attendance at Mass?

Is it not extraordinary that so little should really have
been known of the most famous woman in the world?
Is it not amazing that Sarah was able to conceal her
home life under the glorious camouflage of her stage
career ?

Yet, looking back into history, how little is known of
the great men and women who decorate its pages I

We know where Jean d'Arc was born; we know she
saved the French armies from defeat; but never has it
been written where she went to school, and little or
nothing is known of her family, of the mother who pro-
duced her, of the father who brought her up a heroine.
Oliver Cromwell had a wife, yet what do we know of
her? George Washington was one of the greatest
warriors of his day, yet we know little of the private
life of the Father of America.

I have always felt this lack of personal knowledge of
our own great ones. Only recently have biographers
realised the true scope of their task. Until the intimate
story of Victor Hugo was published, -some few years

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 89

ago, how little we knew of the man who wrote three
times as many words as there are in the Holy Bible 1

This is somewhat of a digression, but one justified
perhaps by the considerations involved. If the great and
successful deeds of men of genius make entrancing read-
ing, how much more absorbing can be the tale of their
spiritual struggles and "mental fights" ?

And with her graduation from the art school she was
entitled to enter the Beaux Arts but never did the real
struggles of the lonely, temperamental child who was
Sarah Bernhardt began. Though she did not know it,
a war of impulses was going on within her soul.

There was her great, her undoubted talent for paint-
ing and sculpture, which her teachers were convinced
would soon make her a great personage. There was her
budding dramatic talent which she was only beginning
to suspect There was her fundamental morbidity, that
would plunge her into moods during which she dreamed
of and longed for death. There was the craving of her
turbulent nature for the peace and tranquillity investing
the life of a cloistered nun. There was her inherited
unmorality I know of no other word with which to
describe it which was for ever tugging at her and en-
deavouring to drag her down into the free-and-easy
existence led by her mother. There was her maiden
heart, starving for affection. There was her delicate
health, which made prolonged effort impossible. And
lastly there was her iron will, inherited probably from
her father.

90 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

A phrase in one of the pathetic writings of Mari<
Bashkirtseff comes to my mind: "At the age of fourteer
I was the only person remaining in the world ; for it waj
a world of my own that could be penetrated only bj
understanding, and no one, not even my mother, under-
stood."

How could the frivolous nature of Julie Van Hard
have comprehended the deep waters that ran within the
soul of her unwanted child?

Julie would be enormously vexed at Sarah's seeming
dullness. When she had said something particularly
witty and Julie was witty according to the humorous
standards of the period and Sarah did not smile, Julie
would cry: "Oh, you stupid child! To think that you
are mine. . . I"

Not even Sarah's achievements in the school of paint-
ing could convince Julie that she had not given birth to
a child of inferior mentality. For what success Sarah
had with her pictures, Julie took credit to herself.

She was exasperated by Sarah's attitude towards the
life she herself loved so well. Julie would remain for
hours at table, surrounded by wits and half-wits, dandies
and hangers-on at court, proud in the assumption that
she was an uncrowned queen. At such parties Sarah
would sit speechles's, unable or unwilling to join in the
coarse sallies of her mother's guests. Her mother used
constantly to refer to her in the presence of others as
"That stupid child," or "That queer little creature."

When she had an exceptionally important personage

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 9*

to entertain, Julie would forbid Sarah to show herself,
fearful that her daughter's "stupidity" would injure her
own chances.

As constantly as she blamed Sarah, she praised and
lavished affection on Jeanne, her "little Jeannot."'
Jeanne seemed to take naturally after her mother in all
things, and when she grew older she even surpassed her
mother by the frivolous way in which she lived.

The sad story of Jeanne will be told later, but it may
be said that she had none of Sarah's vast intelligence,
none of her good taste, none of her tremendous capacity
for affection. Jeanne was without talent a pretty but
vapid shell. Her father was not, of course, Edouard
Bernhardt.

Regine, on the other hand, took after Sarah, who
practically brought her up. But Regine had Sarah's
temper and wild, erratic temperament without Sarah's
talent and Sarah's stubborn will. Where Sarah was firm
and unyielding, Regine was merely obstinate. Where
Sarah was clever, Regine was only "smart" She was a
"pocket edition of Sarah," as her mother once remarked,
without Sarah's depth of character.

Two months after Sarah attained her sixteenth birth-
day, her mother moved to No. 265, rue St. Honore, not
far from the Theatre Frangaise better known as the
Comedie Frangaise and Sarah delighted in loitering
about the stage entrance and making friends with the
actors and actresses who passed in and out.

Sometimes she passed whole afternoons and evenings

9 2 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

thus employed. Occasionally she would run errands for
her idols, to be recompensed by a free ticket to the
balcony. On one never-to-be-forgotten occasion Jules
Bondy, one of the actors, took the eager little red-head
into the theatre itself and installed her on a case in the
wings, from which she could see the play without herself
being seen. It was Moliere's Le Miiedn Malgre Lui,
and from that time dated Sarah's love for the works of
the actor-playwright to whom the Comedie Frangaise is
dedicated.

In later years Sarah played Moliere several times, but
she 'made no notable success in this author's works.

Sarah always^ longed to be a comedienne; she might
have been a great one, in fact, but for her greater gifts
for tragedy, which prevented managers from risking her
appearance in lighter drama. Great comediennes of
merit are less rare than great tragediennes. In fact, L
doubt whether there is living to-day an actress who will
ever be called Sarah Bernhardt's equal in tragedy.

Shortly after the household moved, Sarah fell down
the stairs and broke her leg. An infection developed
and it was two months before she was able to walk.
When she finally recovered she was thinner than ever
a veritable skeleton. Her face maintained its eerie
beauty, the large blue eyes retained their occasional fire,
but the flush of fever relieved her habitual pallor and
beneath her neck her body was little more than a bag
of bones.

She ceased wearing short dresses and took to long

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 93

ones, for very shame of her thin limbs. She wore thick
cfothes and corsets to pad herself out She grew intro-
spective, spending long hours alone or playing silently
with her infant sister Regine, or reading books. Once
Mile, de Brabender discovered her on her knees and,
on inquiry, obtained the confession that she had been
praying steadily for nearly three hours.

The religious habit again grew on her, The subjects
for her brush were mostly saints, surrounded with the
conventional halo. She hung her room with religious pic-
tures, some done by herself and some bought cheaply
at a shop near the Church of St. Germain PAuxerrois,
Over her bed was a crucifix, modelled by herself from
wax.

She was confirmed at the age of sixteen years and five
months, and wore the virginal white for days afterwards
until it grew so dirty, indeed, that her exasperated
mother made her throw it away.

A priest had given her a rosary that had been dipped
in the holy waters of Lourdes, and this she wore con-
tinually. In the quarter she became known as "la petite
religieuse" Doctors shook their heads, and predicted
that she was falling into a decline, from which she would
never recover. Her suitors fell off, one by one, until
only a retired miller, Jacques Boujon, a man of fifty,
remained.

To English readers it may seem incredible that a girl
of sixteen should have had actual suitors, and among them
men of position and wealth. This was nevertheless com-

94 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

raon in France in the middle of the last century, and it is
by no means rare in the France of to-day. Added to tiffs
was Julie Van Hard's intense desire to rid herself, once
and for all, of this strange child she had brought into
being, whose sombre presence in her house of gaiety'
seemed to be a perpetual mockery.

One day Sarah was visited in her bedroom, where she
was studying, by her mother and Mile, de Brabender.

"I want you to put on this new dress I have bought
you, and then come down to the salon. There is some-
thing particularly important we have to say to you,'* said
Julie.

Sarah shivered. There seemed something extraor-
dinarily portentous in her mother's manner. Who were
"we"? The child felt, as she told me years later, that
that moment represented a cross-roads in her life.

Overwhelmed with a dread she could not define,
Sarah put her new dress on with trembling fingers and
descended to the salon. There she found quite a com-
pany awaiting her. Foremost in the party was the Due
de Moray. Next to him was her mother. Across the
table was Jean Meyedieu, her father's notary-public.
Next to him was Aunt Rosine. Madame Guerard, wear-
ing an anxious look, occupied a seat near the fireplace.
Mile, de Brabender, accompanied by Jeanne, followed
Sarah in.

The door was closed. Then Julie turned to her
daughter. "Some months ago," she said, "y u refused

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 95

to consider a proposal of marriage from an honourable
gfentleman."

Sarah remained mute.

"To-day another honourable gentleman asks you to
marry him."

Storm signals flashed from the girl's eyes. "I will
marry no one except God!" she declared. "I wish to
return to the Convent!"

"To enter a convent," put in Meyedieu, "one must
have money, or else be a servant You have not a sou!"

"I have the money my father left me !"

"No, you have not! You have only the interest until
you are twenty-one. If, at that, age, you have not
married, the terms of your father's will stipulate that you
shall lose the principal."

The Due de Morny intervened.

"Do you think that you are right; dear, in thus going
against the wishes of your mother?"

Sarah began to sob. "My mother is not married, yet
she wants me to be a wife ! My mother is a Jewess, and
she does not want her daughter to become a nun!"

"Leave the room!" ordered Julie, angrily.

Thus ended the second family council over the future
of Sarah, and the problem was not yet solved.

After this Sarah's existence in her mother's house
became a torment She seldom saw her parent; and
when she did, the latter hardly looked at her. She took
her meals with Regine and Mile, de Brabender in the
nursery. She abandoned art, and spent her days looking

96 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

after her baby sister in the Champs Elysees and on the
quais of the Seine. *

She still attended the theatre as often as she could,
and became a faithful devotee of the Comedie. Often
she would venture as far afield as the Chatelet, or the
Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, to witness plays at the
Gymnase.

One evening she returned, after a solitary evening at
the theatre and, finding the salon empty, began to recite
one of the parts she had seen. She had seen the play so
often that the role of the heroine was practically graven
on her memory. Believing herself entirely alone, she
went right through with the piece, finishing with a dra-
matic flourish at the place where the heroine I forget
the play was supposed to stab herself to death.

There was a hearty "Bravo, bravo I" and the Due de
Morny rose from a chair in which he had been sitting
behind a screen.

The Duke went out and called to Julie and Rosine, and,
when the two sisters entered, he asked the child to play
the part again. At first bashful, Sarah eventually
plucked up courage and finally did as she was asked. The
Duke was much affected.

"That memory and that voice must not be lost I" he
cried. "Sarah shall enter the Conservatoire I"

"She has no sense, but she is not bad at rearing,"
agreed Julie, scenting a happy compromise.

The Conservatoire? Sarah began to worry. What

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 99

was this new horror to which they were so easily con-
demning her ?

"What is it, the Conservato/re?" she asked, hesitating.

"It is a school, my dear," said the Duke; "a school
for great actresses."

"To the Conservatoire, by all means!" cried Aunt
Rosine. "She is too stupid to be a good actress, but it
will keep her out of mischief!"

The Duke was quite excited.

"We have solved the problem !" he cried. "Our Sarah
is to become an actress!"

"But I don't want to be an actress 1" cried poor Sarah.

Her objections were overridden, and that very night
the Duke wrote to- his friends at the Conservatoire, de-
manding that Sarah should be inscribed on the lists for
admission.

Sarah was now within a month of seventeen.

9 6

CHAPTER VIII

WHEN application had been made to Auber, then director
of the Conservatoire who, on the Due de Morny's
recommendation, had agreed to inscribe Sarah on his lists
it was found that only nine weeks remained before the
examinations !

Even to-day, a conservative estimate of the time re-
quired for preparation for the Conservatoire is eighteen
months. Many children start studying for it when they
are ten or eleven. Rarely has any pupil succeeded in
entering without at least nine months' preliminary study.
And Sarah had only nine weeks 1

Aunt Rosine was sceptical of Sarah's ability to pass
the examinations. The Due de Morny was consoling.

"You will not pass this time," he said, u but there are
other examinations next year."

As to Julie Van Hard, she was inexorable with her
daughter.

"You are my daughter. You shall not disgrace me
by failing!" she said to Sarah.

Julie took the child out, and bought her books by the
dozen. They consulted Hugo Waldo, an actor acquaint-
ance, and on his advice chose the plays of Corneille,
Moliere and Racine. Julie wanted the child to select a
part in Phedre for her examination, but Mile, de Bra-

98

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 99

bender, the probationer nun, said that this could not be
permitted, as Phedre was too shocking a role to place on
the lips of a jeune fille.

In the end, Sarah learned the part of Agnes in
Moliere's Ecole des Femmes, but never used it in the
examination. She passed most of her time learning to
pronounce her "o's" and "r's" and "p's," and in prac-
tising the art of pronouncing each syllable separately and
in putting the accent in the tone, rather than on the
syllabic divisions. Nowhere is French spoken entirely
purely, except on the stage of the better Paris theatres.

The day of the examinations came, and Sarah was by
now word-perfect To enable her to say her part, how-
ever, it was necessary for someone to give the cues. This
had not been thought of.

Julie, whose taste in dress was exquisite but a trifle
exotic, had out-done herself in her purchases of things
for Sarah to wear on the great day. The gown was
black, deeply decollete about the shoulders ; a corset ac-
centuated the extreme slenderness of her waist ; the skirt
was short, but lacy drawers, beautifully embroidered,
descended to the beaded slippers.

Around her neck, Sarah wore a white silk scarf. Her
hair, after an hour's tussle with the hairdresser, had
been combed and tugged into some sort of order and was
bound tightly back from the forehead with a wide black
ribbon. The effect was bizarre. One of George
Clairin's best-known sketches of Sarah showed her in the

ioo The Real Sarah Bernhardt

hands of the hairdresser on this occasion, her mother
standing near.

After what seemed an interminable wait in the hot,
stifling auditorium of the Conservatoire, Sarah's name
was called. Trembling, she ascended to the stage. On
the way she tried to loosen the painful ribbon about her
head, with the result that it came unpinned and her
glorious red-gold hair tumbled forthwith about her face.
Indeed when she mounted to the stage where the jury
sat in uncompromising attitudes, her face could hardly
be seen.

"And what will you recite?" asked the chairman, a
man named Leataud.

"I have learned the part of Agnes, but I have no one
to give me my cues," said Sarah.

"Then what will you do ?"

Sarah was at a loss, but she regained courage suddenly
on seeing two of the jury smiling at her encouragingly.

"I will recite to you a fable: The Two Pigeons,' "
she said.

When she had finished, Professor Provost, one of the
jury, asked that she should be accepted. "I will put her
in my class," he said. "The child has a voice of gold!"

This was the first occasion on which Sarah's "golden
voice" was thus referred to.

Sarah, who was eighth on the list at the Conservatoire,
took no prize, but she was admitted. She was mad with
joy. Her mother condescended to praise her a little.
Mile, de Brabender and Madame Guerard overwhelmed

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 101

her with caresses. Little Sarah was a member of the
Conservatoire ! Her career had begun !

She had no conspicuous success at the Conservatoire.
She obtained indeed one second prize for comedy, but her
great talent for the drama had not yet developed. With
the exception of Camille Doucet the jury voted unani-
mously that she could not be included among those to
be given certificates of merit. Sarah, despite her second
prize, returned home in tragic mood.

"It was the second great disappointment of my life, *
she said, when she related it to me years later. "I crept
up to my bedroom and locked the door. Had there
been any poison at hand I would have taken it. I was
seized with a great desire to end my life. I thought of
the Convent, of Mere Saint-Sophie. Oh, if they had
only let me become a nun, instead of entering this vast,
unkind world of the theatre 1 I cried my eyes out and
finally went to sleep..

"When I awoke, it was late at night. There was not
a sound in the house. My fury had spent itself, and
only a great despair remained. The thought that I would
have to face my mother the next day seared my soul
How could I stand her sarcasm, that cutting phrase I
knew so well: Thou art so stupid, child I 1

"I determined I would end it all for ever. I would
die. I would creep out of the house while no one
watched, run down to the quai and throw myself in the
Seine. . . .

"I approached the door, unlocked it, opened it

102 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

cautiously. As I did so a piece of paper, that had been
thrust into the jamb, fluttered to the ground. I took it
nervously. It was a letter from Madame Guerard, my
faithful old nurse. I retraced my steps into the room
and held the letter to the candle as I incredulously read
the message it contained :

" While you were asleep the Due de Morny sent a
note to your mother saying that Camille Doucet has
confirmed that your engagement at the Comedie
Frangaise is arranged for. . . . '

"My mood changed miraculously. I shouted with joy.
I rant to the door, flung it open, ready to cry out my
news to anyone who heard me. But the household slept.
I went back to bed and cried myself to sleep for very
happiness."

The next day Sarah received a formal letter sum-
moning her to the Comedie. The day following she was
engaged, and signed hei: contract. Almost immediately
she began rehearsing in the play Iphigenie.

About two months before her eighteenth birthday
Sarah made her debut at the Comedie, in a minor part
As a debutante from the Conservatoire, she was naturally
fair prey for the critics. The greatest of these was
Francisque Sarcey, who was credited with the power to
make or break an actress. Managers hung on his
verdicts.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 103

This is what that powerful critic had to say about Sarah
on the occasion of her debut.

"Mile. Bernhardt is tall and pretty and enunciates well,
which is all that can be said for the moment.'*

Another critic, James Berbier, wrote :

"A young woman named Sarah Bernhardt made her
debut at the Comedie on September i. She has a pretty
voice and a not-unpleasing face, but her body is ugly and
she has no stage presence."

Still another, Pierre Mirabeau, declared :

"Sarah Bernhardt has no personality; she possesses
only a voice."

After Sarah's second debut, in Valene } this same Mira-
beau wrote :

"We had the pleasure of seeing in the cast at the
Comedie the young woman Sarah Bernhardt, who made
her debut recently in Iphigenie. She has improved, but
she still has much to learn before she can properly be
considered worthy of the House of Moliere."

When Sarah appeared in Les Femmes Savantes, Fran-

104 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

cisque Sarcey, who had ignored her in Valerie^ devoted
several lines to her:

u MUe. Bernhardt took the role of Henriette. She
was just as pretty and insignificant as in Iphigenie and in
Valerie. No reflections on her performance can be
extremely gay. However, it is doubtless natural that
among all the debutantes we are asked to see there should
be some who do not succeed."

Sarah was furious at these critiques, but not as furious
as her mother, who bitterly exclaimed:

"Seel All the world calls you stupid, and all the
world knows that you are my child I"

Her mother did not perhaps realise that her words
cut the young actress straight to the heart. Above all
things Sarah had wanted to please Julie ; above all things
Sarah had feared her mother's harsh criticisms.

That night she was found moaning in her dressing-
room. A doctor, hurriedly called, declared she had
taken poison, and she was rushed off to the hospital.

For five days Sarah hovered between life and death,
finally rallying after four of the best doctors in Paris
had been called into aid in the fight.

In response to questioning by her old friend, Madame
Guerard, Sarah confessed that she had swallowed the
contents of a bottle of liquid rouge. Asked the reason
for this strange and terrible act she answered :

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 105

"Life was useless; I wanted to see what death was
like!"

I have always believed that it was her mother's want
of sympathy for her which caused Sarah's desperate act,
and if there was another reason the world never knew it.
Newspapers of the day attributed it to a love affair, but
this Sarah denied when she related the episode to me
an episode, by the way, which is not included in her
Memoirs.

"I was wrapped up in my art, and had no serious
love affairs at that time," she ' said. "I was simply
despondent because I did not succeed fast enough. Why !
not a single critic praised me!"

It was the famous authoress Georges Sand who took
Sarah in hand afterwards, preached love of life to her
and persuaded her that a great future lay ahead. To
Georges Sand Sarah one day confided:

"Madame Sand, I would rather die than not be the
greatest actress in the world!"

"You are the greatest, my child!" $aid Madame Sand
with conviction, and added: "One day soon the world
will lie at your feet!"

Sarah's morbidity continued to be one of her chief
characteristics however. She delighted in going to
funerals ; and visiting the Morgue, that grim stone build-
ing with its fearful rows of corpse's exposed on marble
slabs, was one of her favorite diversions.

Death had a weird fascination for her. Shortly after
she entered the Comedie she had a love affair with an

io6 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

undertaker's assistant, but she broke off her engagement
to him when he refused to allow her to be present at an
embalming.

She used to describe the robe she wished to be buried
in: "Pure white, with a crimson edging, and with yellow
lilies embroidered about the girdle."

The crimson edging and the embroidery were absent
when she was finally laid to rest.

Later on we shall hear again of this morbid streak
in the divine actress how she designed and even slept
in the very coffin in which she was buried; how once she
shammed dead in her di^ssing-room at the Odeon to
such purpose that a hearse ^was sent for and the curtain
rung down, while a tearful director announced her
demise !

Her notorious temper had not left her. If anything,
it was more violent than ever. The stage door-keeper
at the Comedie on one occasion called her "Young Bern-
hardt," omitting the honorary prefix of "Mademoiselle."
Without a word she broke her parasol across the man's
head. Seeing him bleeding, she hurried for water, tore
her silk petticoat into pieces, and bathed and bound his
wound.

Twenty years later, when her name was beginning to
echo round the world, this same door-keeper came to her
house and told her that he had lost his position through
infirmity and was now at the end of his resources.

With one of those gestures of munificence which mark
\ the tragedienne's career like flashes of light, Bernhardt

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 107

turned to her secretary and instructed him to buy the
old man a cottage in his native Normandy, and to place
a sufficient sum in trust to keep him for the remainder
of his life.

Bernhardt made many enemies during her first years
on the stage, and some of them remained her adversaries
until their deaths. She outlived almost all of them.

The afternoon of her debut at the Comedie was a
matinee exclusively for professional folk and critics. One
of the latter, an old and embittered man named Prioleau,
was credited with being almost as powerful as Sarcey.
He was the doyen of the crit'cs, and as such occupied
a privileged position in the wings.

The better to see the performance, he shifted his chair
until it partly blocked one of the exits. Sarah Bern-
hardt, going off the stage backwards, tripped over the
legs of the critic's chair and nearly fell. On recovering
herself, she seized the chair by its legs and pitched the
critic to the floor. Then she turned on her heel with a
fiery admonition to "keep your legs to yourself."

Horrified actresses told the angry girl that the man she
had insulted was Prioleau, the great critic. Returning to
where the choleric old gentleman was picking himself up,
Sarah set herself squarely in front of him, her eyes
glinting fire.

"If you dare to say or write a word about me," she
warned him, "I will scratch your eyes out!"

The next day she sent him a written apology and a
bunch of flowers, following this with a personal visit, in

io8 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

which she pleaded with the old man to forgive an act of
which she would certainly not have been capable had
she been in her right senses. Prioleau never forgave her,
but he never used his heavy weapon of sarcasm against
her. Perhaps he always secretly believed in her threat.
He died not long afterwards.

Sarah was an extraordinary mixture of pugnacity and
sentiment. One day she found a dog investigating her
overturned bottle of smelling-salts. Infuriated she
dropped the poor little creature out of the dressing-room
window on to a small ledge from which, if it had moved,
it would have fallen four or five stories to the ground.

Five minutes later shouts attracted a crowd to the
dressing-room, where they found a maid desperately
hanging on to Sarah's feet, while the young actress hung
head downwards outside the window, in order to rescue
the dog. Having got the animal up safely, she took it
home and smothered it with kindness, never permitting it
to leave her until it died of old age fourteen years later.

Sarah's love for animals particularly ferocious ones
was one of the abiding passions of her life. At dif-
ferent times she owned a pink monkey given her by an
African explorer, a wildcat which was presented to her
during one of her American tours, and two lion cubs,
baptised "Justinian" and "Scarpia." All four were tame
and often accompanied her to the theatre, remaining in
her dressing-room while she played.

She also once brought back with her from Mexico a
tiger cub, which terrorised her household and, when she

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 109

took it to the theatre one day, nearly broke up the per-
formance by eating and tearing the curtains. The cub
was finally poisoned by somebody in Sarah's entourage.
On one occasion I saw Sarah feeding live quails to this
tiger cub in her dressing-room. The same day it bit
Madame Joliet, the prompter.

Another savage creature Sarah once owned was a dog.
She had only to say to him "Allez I" (Go !) and he would
spring at any one's throat. One day when we were at
the Hotel Avenida, Lisbon, Sarah asked me to go to my
room to fetch something for her. As I went out I heard
her say "Allez I" and the dog sprang at me. Fortunately
my husband arrived just in time, and tore the dog away.
White with fury, Pierre said to Sarah: "If that happens
again, I'll kill the brute!"

But I never believed Sarah did the thing deliberately.
She was very apologetic.

But this is disgressing from our story. We left Sarah
as a debutante at the Comedie Frangaise. Her debut, as
we have seen, was not very brilliant. But if her entrance
into France's most famous theatre was not particularly
exciting, her exit was the reverse.

CHAPTER IX

IN the Comedie Frangaise stands a statue: the bust of
Moliere, the great actor-playwright to whom the theatre
is dedicated. Each year, on the anniversary of his
death, every actor and actress belonging to the company
attached to the playhouse must file past t|e statue and
salute.

It was due to an incident occurring during this annual
ceremony that Sarah Bernhardt left the Comedie for the
first time.

The actresses were assembled in a corridor giving
access to the statue the societaires (actresses who had
completed their period of apprenticeship) naturally tak-
ing precedence over the debutantes. All were in costume,
and over the costumes they wore the long mantle, show-
ing their badge of membership of the Comedie. These
mantles had long trains and, in endeavoring to avoid
treading on one of them, little Regine Bernhardt, who
held Sarah's hand, inadvertently stepped on that worn
by Madame Nathalie, one of the oldest actresses of the
theatre, whom Sarah described as u old and wicked."

Madame Nathalie turned and, roughly seizing the child
pushed her so violently that she was flung against a
stone pillar, bruising her side and cutting her face.

Sarah Bernhardt forgot the solemnity of the occasion,

no

The Real Sarah Bernhardt in

forgot the distinction of the company, forgot everything
except that her little sister had been wantonly struck.

"Beast!" she cried, and, running to the old actress,
slapped first one side of her face and then the other, as
hard as she could strike. The blows resounded through-
out the corridor.

Madame Nathalie remained rooted to the spot. Sarah
stood before her, with panting bosom and eyes flashing
fire. For an instant it looked as though the ceremony
would be spoiled, but other members of the company
rushed between the two and they were hurried in different
directions.

The next day she was summoned to the office of M.
Thierry, director of the Comedie.

"Your conduct has been disgraceful, mademoiselle!"
he said, "and your engagement should be cancelled imme-
diately, but I have decided to give you one chance to make
amends. Waiting in the next room are Madame Nath-
alie, and two other societaires. You will apologise to
Madame Nathalie, in their presence, and in mine."

"Apologise to that woman who injured my baby
sister?" cried Sarah. "Never!"

"Think, mademoiselle," urged Thierry. "Unless you
do so you leave the Comedie !"

Leave the Comedie ! After all the torturing months
of preparation, after all the help she had received from
the Due de Morny, from Camille Doucet and her other
friends, after the hard struggle at the Conservatoire.

ii2 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Sarah saw her mother's bitter eyes, heard her scornful
tongue.

She knew that her admission to the Comedie Frangaise
had been an honour and a favour which her performance
at the Conservatoire did not justify. She knew that if
her engagement was cancelled it was possible that she
might look in vain for other employment; that every
manager in Paris might be turned against her. More,
she knew that her family would regard her leaving the
Comedie as a personal insult to them, and it would, she
realised, be no longer feasible for her to live at home.
Sarah thought of her Aunt Rosine's triumphant "I told
you so," and shuddered.

But on the other hand, she knew that she was in the
right. A sense of tremendous injustice weighed upon
her. This woman had struck her little sister, and she
had administered a deserved correction. What though
she was one of the oldest societalres at the Frangaise,
She should be the one to apologise I

It took Sarah some five minutes to arrive at this, her
final conclusion, and then, turning to M. Thierry, she
said :

"If Madame Nathalie will apologise to Regine, I will
apologise to her I"

M. Thierry looked at her incredulously.

"You mean that you will allow a question of pure pride
to interfere with your career and perhaps spoil your
future?" he demanded.

"I mean that if the whole incident occurred again, I

The Real Sarah Bernhardt

would slap Madame Nathalie twice as hard!" said Sarah
angrily.

M. Thierry turned back to his papers.

"Very well, mademoiselle," he said; "you have until
to-morrow afternoon to change your mind!"

Sarah did not apologise, and she was not immediately
sent away. Her powerful friends who had supported
her in her effort to enter the theatre made representa-
tions to M. Thierry, and, much against his will, he agreed
to give the young actress another chance.

But Madame Nathalie nursed her spite, and when, a
few weeks later, Sarah was given the role of Dolores,
in the play of that name by Brouihet, she contrived to
influence the director to take the part away from the girl,
almost on the eve of production, and give it to Madame
Favart

No sooner did Sarah learn this than she bounded into
M. Thierry's office.

"Give me my contract 1" she cried. "I resign I I will
have nothing more to do with your theatre I"

The same evening she was again a free agent. She
had left the Comedie. When she returned home to in-
form her mother of her action, the latter took it coolly.

"Very well," said Julie, "you need look for no further
help from me, or from my friends. Hereafter you can
do with your life as you wish! You are emancipated!"

Sarah was then eighteen years old. From that day on
she was free of maternal control, and a few weeks later
she secured a minor part at the Gymnase, After playing

ii4 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

this, she was promised a leading part in a play called
Launching a Wife, but this promise was not kept. In
her anger, Sarah left the theatre, packed her trunk, and,
with less than a thousand francs, left suddenly for Spain.

In Madrid she developed a passion for bull-fighting.
At one moment, according to Caroline, her maid, she
became engaged to Juan Lopez, a famous matador, but
at a dinner given to celebrate the engagement, which was
attended by famous personalities of the corrida, Lopez
drank too copiously of the strong vintages of Spain, and
Sarah, disgusted, left him and the dinner party and re-
turned to her hotel. This incident decided her return
to Paris, and, borrowing the necessary money from the
manager of the hotel, who had known her father, she
left the next day.

This was the first of two mysterious visits Sarah paid
to Spain, Of the second, which occurred some eleven
years later, practically nothing is known.

Now began the most painful period of Sarah Bern-
hardt' s life. No longer able to face the daily tirades of
her mother and her aunts, who called her lazy, idle and
wilful, she left the former's flat and took one of her own
in the rue Duphot, close by the Madeleine.

She drifted away from her family and the friends of
her childhood and made questionable acquaintances in the
fast-living set where her beauty, originality and wit made
her much sought after. She became a well-known figure
in certain salons and in the restaurants a la mode.

Now and again she played small parts in various thea-

The Real Sarah Bernhardt us

tres, but long intervals occurred between the occasions
on which she worked. Her figure remained excessively
slender, boyish and agile. It never became really full,
but its slenderness was less noticeable after she had given
birth to her son, Maurice. It then to some extent
rounded out, only to become thin again when she was
forty, at which epoch she invented the shoulder-length
glove to conceal the skeleton-like outline of her arms.

The birth of her son was the event which changed
Sarah's whole life. It gave her something to live for.
Until then she had been a wilful, spoiled, eccentric girl,
given to tremendous fits of temper which were invariably
followed by prolonged periods of despondency.

She had few intimates, and the friends who gathered
round her were not of the sort likely to set her feet in
the right direction. She had spells of strenuous energy,
which would be succeeded by fits of laziness lasting some-
times for months, during which time she would live par-
simoniously on small sums borrowed from stage acquaint-
ances or from her mother's friend, the Due de Morny,
who still remained faithful to the child for whom he had
done so much.

Nothing, unless it was her eccentricity, distinguished
her from the hundreds of other lovely girls at that time
adorning the Paris stage. She had given up her attempts
at painting, after moderate successes gained at several
salons ; the passion for modelling had not yet seized her,
and, although she had undoubtedly immense talent for

n6 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

acting, she neglected to develop it, with the result that
her theatrical engagements were few and far between.

She and her young sister Jeanne, then aged only -four-
teen, would o'ften be seen, at public balls of the better
class, dancing with a cohort of young men, amongst whom
were included some of the wildest members of society.
She was frequently a guest at smart but somewhat ques-
tionable entertainments in the homes of titled acquaint-
ances, whose riches were expressed in the luxury and the
beautiful women with whom they surrounded themselves,
and in the amount of rare wines they and their friends
consumed.

Of average height, exceptionally slim, with blue eyes
alternately flashing wit and fire, and invariably costumed
in the latest fashion, Sarah, as she neared her majority,
was in danger, despite her great talent, of falling into that
bottomless pit which still exists in Paris for beautiful
girls, and out of which it is so difficult to climb.

She was a member of one of the fastest sets of a fast
city, and only a miracle could have been expected to save
her. Her health was bad, she had frequent spells of
coughing, and the tell-tale flush of fever was constantly
on her cheeks. To all admonitions, however, she would
reply that, if her life was to be a short one, she had better
enjoy it to the full while there was yet time.

But the needful miracle happened. As the result of an
ardent love affair, almost certainly with a man of princely
family, she gave birth to a boy, whom she named Maurice.

As in her own case, the accouchement was a difficult one,

(Photo, Nadar)

Sarah Bernhardt.
(i859)

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 117

and complications ensued which rendered her recovery
doubtful. The child was under-sized but robust, and
from his birth he resembled his. mother.

Motherhood to Sarah was at once a bgon and a scourge
that whipped her flagging consciousness of right and
wrong.

It brought her face to face with the hard realities of!
the pathways of error, but it gave her the strength of
character she had lacked and which was to lead her up
from and out of these dangerous pathways. It provided
her with the one thing that had been so far lacking in
her character.

Motherhood gave Sarah Bernhardt ambition.^

If from then on she became greedy of praise and
publicity, she at the same time became a strenuous
worker; if she was hard with those whom she used as
stepping-stones, she was harder with herself; if she al-
lowed her tongue to become caustic and her manner over-
bearing, it was because life had been revealed to her in
its veritable aspect, and because she realised the supreme
necessity of building a wall between herself and her past.

Intolerant of criticism, exquisite in her art, mighty in
labour, Sarah Bernhardt lavished on her tiny son a love
she had never believed she could feel for any human being.

Every aim of her existence was to provide for him
'while he was young the shield of respectability she her-
self had never known.

Proud though she might be to the exterior world, she
was humility itself before the cradle of her child.

n8 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

And her struggle was no easy one. She told me of it
one day on board ship while we were travelling to the
Near East, and so deep an impression did her words
make on me that I can remember them almost textually.

"When my son was born," she said, "I had, for all my
fortune, the sum of two hundred francs. If it had not
been for Madame Guerard, who officiated at the birth of
my child as she had officiated at my own, I do not know
what I should have done.

"I owed ten times two hundred francs in small trades-
men's bills, scattered about the city. My mother was
ill, and could not be appealed to. I was ashamed to go
to my other friends, such as the Due de Morny, who
would have been only too glad to have helped me, and
I forbade Madame Guerard to say a - word to anyone
about my predicament.

"When my sister Regine came to see me, she was told
that I had a contagious disease and could not be seen.
Later on it was given out that I had left Paris for a holi-
day in the country.

"When the first week was up I had scarcely a sou.
It was then that I determined to appeal to the one man
whom duty should have compelled to aid me, and I sent
a letter to the Prince, imploring him to take pity upon
me and upon our child.

"The Prince's reply was brutality itself: 'I know a
woman named Bernhardt,' he wrote, 'but I do not know
her child.' The note enclosed fifty -francs I

"I persuaded myself that there was a mistake. I could

The Real Sarah Bernhardt

not believe that the man I had loved could be so cruel.

"I dragged myself out of bed and went, faint and ill,
to a mansion in the rue de Lille, where the Prince was
that night giving a joyous fete.

"I was shown into an ante-room and waited nearly an
hour before the Prince finally condescended to see me.

"Standing there in the doorway like a magistrate come
to judge to judge me, the mother of his child whom I
carried in my arms he asked me what I wanted. I
could not believe his attitude.

" 'I have come to show you your child, and to demand
your recognition of him!' I answered.

"The Prince's reply was to become purple with anger,
to thump his fist on the table, and not only to deny the
child, but to make the most monstrous allegation con-
ceivable.

"Nearly fainting, I went from the house in tears, my
baby's cries mingling in my ears with the music of the
dance and the shouts of the reckless party within."

Such was the first great trial of the woman who was
to become the most famous tragic actress on the world's
stage.

The fortitude that Sarah Bernhardt gave proof of
then became the basis of the strong character which
slowly formed from that day onwards. Scorned by the
man who of all men had best the right to help her, Sarah
bitterly determined to make the males of the species pay
for the agony of her calvary.

This was the turning point of Sarah Bernhardt's life.

120 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

In one respect the world owes the evil Prince a

debt, for had he recognised the child, had he lavished
money and tenderness upon the mother, there is a proba-
bility that she would never have found the will and de-
termination which were the earnest of her future suc-
cess. Never was the adage that courage is born of neces-
sity truer than in the case of the young Sarah Bernhardt.

Forced to work to support her child, whom she sent to
a professional nurse in Normandy, Sarah laboured with
a fierceness and a tenacity unequalled in the history of
the stage.

She found work at the Gymnase, at the Porte St. Mar-
tin, at the Vaudeville, at the Lyric and at other theatres.
Never allowing herself a moment's rest, studying her
parts far into the night, arriving always the first for re-
hearsals, she gamely set foot on rung after rung of the
ladder which she had herself set up.

Her reputation, which had been so sadly tarnished
by her previous mistakes, became once more satisfactory.
She enjoyed the friendship of influential managers and
playwrights. It was not long before she became marked
for success. Critics began to comment favourably on
her work, especially in La Biche au Bois t a play at the
Porte St. Martin, which gave her her first opportunity
as a star, and which resulted in her being offered a con-
tract by M. Fournier for three years.

Before she accepted this contract, however, Lambert
Thiboust, a well-known playwright, asked her to take the
name part in La Bergere d'lvry, and she accepted sub-

The Real Sarah Bernhardt

ject, of course, to the approval of the directors of the
Ambigu theatre, where the piece was to be played.

These directors were two men named Faille and Chilly.
Chilly had a mistress, Laurence Gerard, whom he desired
to have the part To please Thiboust, however, they
consented to give Sarah a hearing in the rehearsal room
of the Ambigu, and thither she went and recited a part
she had learned at the Comedie Frangaise in On ne badine
pas avec V amour. There was complete silence until she
had finished, and then Faille rose and shook his head
sadly.

"My poor little girl," he said, with assumed sympathy,
"you cannot take this part! You are too thin and, be-
sides, you are in no way equipped for the theatre I You
are not even a good actress!"

Sarah could hardly believe her ears.

"Tenez," pursued Faille, "here is Chilly, who has
heard you from behind that curtain. Ask him what he
thinks."

Sarah turned to Chilly, the little director who was later
to be intimately associated with' her career.

"Lambert Thiboust is crazy!" said Chilly shortly.
"You would be no good in the part, mademoiselle I We
cannot give it to you !"

As Sarah went out, more or less in a daze, she passed
Laurence Gerard on her way in. Then she realised why
she had lost the part

Later on, Chilly became famous as co-director of the
Odeon. Faille never succeeded, and years later, taking

122 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

pity on him, Sarah Bernhardt acted in a benefit perform-
ance to establish a fund for his old age.

Sarah was ever generous in such matters. She never
forgave an enemy who remained powerful, but she could
always forgive and forget when poverty or misery over-
took those who had done her harm.

CHAPTER X

FOLLOWING the fiasco of her lost engagement at the
Ambigu, Sarah Bernhardt visited her old and faithful
friend, Camille Doucet. She was kept waiting some
minutes in an ante-room, and, on being bidden eventually
to go into his office, almost ran into a tall, handsome
young man, who had been in conference with Doucet
The man stopped and apologised, and Sarah was con-
scious of two deep-set blue eyes regarding her with a real
interest.

"Is this not Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt?" the tall
man asked. On Sarah's hesitating admission that he was
right, the man continued:

"I have just been talking to Doucet about you. Come
in, and we will see him together."

Sarah followed him, not knowing who her new ac-
quaintance was, nor understanding the nature of his
business with her. Once in Camille Doucet' s office, how-
ever, she was quickly informed.

"This is Pierre Berton, junior," said Doucet, introduc-
ing her. "He would like to see you a member of his
company at the Odeon."

Sarah was overwhelmed. Pierre Berton was then one
of the most popular actors on the French stage ; he was
also, after Mounet-Sully, the handsomest. To have been

123

124 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

singled out by him for a part at the Odeon was an honour
she had never dared dream of. There was no actor in
France with whom she would sooner have worked.

Sarah was too much taken aback at the sudden propo-
sition to say much. Extending her hand to Berton, she
thanked him with a smile.

'There is, however, an obstacle," went on Doucet. "I
have just learned this morning that the Odeon staff has
been reorganised and that Chilly has been named co-di-
rector with Duquesnel."

Sarah's spirits fell like lead. How could she hope for
an engagement at the Odeon, when one of the men who
would have to sign her contract was the same who had,
only a few days previously, said publicly that she could
not act? Seeing her downcast Berton tried to reassure
her.

"You need not be afraid of Chilly I" he said. "I have
spoken to Duquesnel, and he is on our side. Chilly will
have to agree 1"

An appointment was made for Sarah to see Duquesnel
on the following day and, after some further conversa-
tion, Berton offered to accompany Sarah home. In the
cab Sarah asked him what was the reason for his inter-
est in her.

"Since the day I saw you in Les Femmes S cm antes at
the Comedie Frangaise," Berton answered, "I have be-
lieved that you would one day become a very great actress,
but I believe also that you need someone to aid you with
the directors, who do not understand your temperament

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 125

I have watched you for two years, and I am prepared
to help you at the Odeon, as far as possible, if you will
allow me to do so."

Sarah's reply, Berton told me in later years after I
had become his wife, was to seize and kiss his hand im-
pulsively.

From that moment began the wonderful romance which
developed between these two Pierre Berton, the accom-
plished and successful actor, and Sarah Bernhardt, the
debutante of twenty-two. Their relationship lasted a
little over two years. When it finished we shall see
why presently Sarah was as great an actress as he an
actor. In two short years she had leaped to fame.

They met, as arranged, in DuquesnePs office at the
Odeon, on the day following Sarah's meeting with Ber-
ton and Doucet. Sarah was immediately taken with
Duquesnel, a mild, blue-eyed man, endowed with pro-
digious activity and with the name of being possibly the
greatest metteur-en-scene in Paris. He was exceedingly
courteous to her and set her at ease immediately by de-
claring that he thought her engagement could easily be
arranged.

She asked about Chilly. "You shall see him to-mor-
row," promised Duquesnel. Sarah looked at Berton.

"I have spoken to him," said the actor, "and he has
promised to leave the engagement of the company in
my own hands, providing the salaries and the lengths of
the contracts are supervised and agreed to by him and
Monsieur Duquesnel."

126 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Later on Sarah discovered that what had actually
happened was that Chilly, spoken to the evening before,
had flatly declined to consider Sarah as a member of the
company.

"She is not an actress, and shows no promise of ever
being one!" he repeated.

And then Pierre Berton had threatened to resign, so
that In face of this threatened calamity Chilly had given
way. He had insisted, however, that the responsibility
for Sarah's engagement should rest with Berton and Du-
quesnel.

The next day Sarah went to DuquesnePs office again,
and was introduced to Chilly, who presented her with her
contract

"Believe me, mademoiselle," he said, "had I been alone
in this matter, you would not have been engaged 1"

"If you had been alone here I would not have con-
sented to sign!" said Sarah haughtily.

For months after that, she told me, she hated Chilly.
In reality, however, he was a decent little fellow, and a
man of great ability, whose only fault was his obstinacy.
Later on he and Sarah became fast friends, and when
Sarah left the Odeon, to return to the Comedie Fran-
gaise as the triumphant idol of the French stage, it was
Chilly who went on his knees to her and implored her
to reconsider her decision.

Sarah entered the Odeon in 1866. In 1868 she was
famous. In 1872 she re-entered the Comedie Frangaise,

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 127

where she remained eight years. In 1882 she was mar-
ried, and in 1889 became a widow.

I give these dates now because the period comprised
by them was that in which Sarah Bernhardt reached the
supreme pinnacle of her glory, and it was during this
period, also, that the most romantic episodes of her life
occurred.

Le Jeu de V Amour et du Hasard (The Game of Love
and Luck), by Marivaux, was the piece in which Sarah
made her debut at the Odeon. Berton and Duquesnel
were mortified, Chilly was triumphant : Sarah had failed !
There was no mistaking the failure. Scarcely any
applause was vouchsafed the young actress and so con-
spicuous was her lack of success that the piece was with-
drawn within a few weeks, after playing to half-empty
houses.

Chilly wanted to break her contract, but Berton and
Duquesnel restrained him. Berton gave it as his opin-
ion that Sarah was made for tragedy, whereas the play
by Marivaux was a comedy, and Sarah's part obviously
unsuited to her.

Among the famous people who were in the audrence the
night Sarah Bernhardt made her debut at the Odeon was
Alexandre Dumas the elder. After the play was over
Sarah overheard Duquesnel ask him:

"What do you think of the young Sarah?"

"She has the head of a virgin and the body of a broom-
stick 1" retorted Dumas, dryly.

Sarah was then earning the munificent sum of 100

128 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

francs (four pounds) a month. From the estate of her
father she still received a small amount not more than
200 francs monthly, and on this income was obliged to
live.

For several months she worked as an understudy,
Chilly obstinately refusing to consent to her taking any
important roles.

During -this period the love of Pierre Berton for his
erratic little protegee grew enormously. On more than*
one occasion he asked her to marry him, but Sarah re-
fused, on the ground that it would be unfair to the
woman who for years had lived with Berton as his wife,
and who had presented him with four children.
* The fact that Berton was willing and even anxious to
abandon this woman (his wife in all but name) and "his
family indicates the depth of his passion for Sarah Bern-
hardt. He confessed to me in later life after our mar-
riage that "the days that Sarah Bernhardt consented to
devote to me were like pages from immortality. One
felt that one could not die 1"

That Sarah returned his love is a fact too well known
to need confirmation here, but I have always doubted
whether she gave to Pierre the full and sincere depth
of the passion he brought to her. Sarah's was a nature
too complex to harbour any deep feeling for long.

There is also the indisputable fact that at this moment
she was living solely for the stage, the animating force
within her being a determination that her baby son should

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 129

never lack for money or advantages. Neither has he,
throughout his long life.

Life at the Odeon was toil fierce and unremitting, but
Sarah loved it. She would wake at nine o'clock and
read over her parts, both in bed and while she was dress-
ing. At eleven o'clock, and often again in the after-
noon, there were rehearsals of plays quite different from
the one that was to be given at night.

Her evident desire to work, combined with the glori-
ous quality of her voice, which was already becoming fe-
nowned among playgoers, brought even the manager,
Chilly, round to her side. Reliability and hard work
were his two fetishes. He could not forgive Sarah her
thin legs, but he was madly enthusiastic over her voice.

"Oh! if you could only act I" he said to her on more
than one occasion.

Fine acting is not precisely a gift of the gods; it is
the ultimate result of a willingness to acquire technique
by constant attention to petty details. No actor ever be-
came great over-night who had not spent weary months
in the acquisition of technique.

Now, three principal acquirements go to make up stage
technique. First, there is what is known as stage pres-
ence, or the ability to lose one's own individuality in the
part one is playing. Secondly, there is the speaking
voice, which should be so perfected that a .whisper may
carry drama, pathos or humour to the topmost gallery
and be understood. Thirdly, there is memory.'

Sarah had the voice and she certainly had a marvellous

130 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

memory. She could take the book of a new part at
night and return on the following afternoon with the role
committed to memory. Once she had learned it, Sarah
never forgot a part, even though she might be playing
two different pieces, afternoon and night.

When Berton wrote Zaza, the play for which he is
best known in England, she went over it with him, tak-
ing a whole night to do it. The next day Berton was to
read it to an audience of managers and producers. While
he was reading the third act, Sarah objected to his way
of interpreting one of the parts.

"It should go like this," she said and forthwith she
recited for fifteen minutes words which she had only
read once. On comparison with the book it was found
that she had not made a single mistake.

In the '8o's I attended a picnic at St. Germain, and
heard Sarah recite a part in Iphigenie, the first play in
which she appeared at the Comedie Fran^aise, and in
which she played only on two occasions during her long
career. There was never a moment after she became
internationally famous when Sarah could not recite out
of her prodigious memory the whole of the words of
any one of fifty or sixty different plays.

I have said that her voice was becoming known in
Paris. One day Georges Sand came to her dressing-
room. Looking very mysterious, she said :

"There is a gentleman outside who has fallen in love
with your voice 1"

"Send him away!" retorted Sarah petulantly. She

The Real Sarah Bernhardt

was in a bad humour, in consequence of a quarrel with
Berton.

"You cannot send this man away, my dear!" said
Madame Sand. "He is the Prince I"

"Never mind; I do not want to see him, Prince or no
Prince," declared the young actress.

After much coaxing, however, she consented to meet
the "gentleman in love with her voice," and descended
to the stage, where she found Prince Napoleon talking
with Louis Bouilhet. Sarah shook his hand, instead of
kissing it, as was the custom, and said never a word.
The Prince was furious.

"She is spiteful, your little kitten," he said to Georges
Sand.

"She is a Madonna, sire I" said the authoress.

"A Madonna who acts like a devil!" retorted the
Prince, shortly, and, turning on his heel, he walked away.

He came back many times, however, and was often
one of a party in Sarah's dressing-room. The news that
she was the recipient of royal favour soon got abroad,
and sarcasms were printed in some of the liberal week-
lies. When she read them, Sarah sent a note to the
editors :

"Criticise my performances on the stage if it pleases
you, but my private life should be free of insult. Further-
more, I have loyal friends who 'will protect my name
with their swords."

132 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

This, too, was published, and all Paris laughed at the
actress who thought it an insult that her name should be
linked with that of a prince. Other people in the pro-
fession thought it a pose, but Sarah was quite sincere.
She was fascinated by the smooth, cynical flow of the
Prince's conversation, and she could not openly bid him
remove himself from her presence. At the bottom of
her heart, however, she disliked him profoundly and
was at small pains to conceal it.

Once an artist of revolutionary tendencies, one Paul
Deshayes, entered Sarah's dressing-room, to find there
Prince Napoleon, Madame Sand and several others.
Deshayes was seeking his gloves, which he had left in
the room a few minutes before. Turning to the Prince
he said curtly :

"You are sitting on my gloves, monsieur!"

The Prince, turning red with anger at this unceremo-
nious mode of address, took the gloves and flung them on
the floor.

"I thought the chair was clean!" he said contemp-
tuously.

Sarah Bernhardt jumped to her feet, picked up the
gloves, and handed them to Deshayes.

Then, turning to the Prince, she said hotly:

"Politeness used to be considered a privilege of kings,
sir, but I perceive that they do not teach it to princes!"

This incident also found its way into print and Sarah's
reputation gained another notch. All this time she had
yet to score a genuine success on the stage.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 133

This came towards the end of her first year at the
Odeon, in circumstances which were much commented
on at the time. All Paris was in arms against Alexandre
Dumas, the most maligned author who has ever lived.
On the night of the premiere of Kean, Dumas appeared
in a box at the Odeon accompanied by his mistress, Ada
Montrin.

Cries came from all over the house calling on him to
"send the woman away." Dumas tried to speak, but his
voice was drowned in cat-calls. Hundreds of students
stood on their seats, chanting an obscene song that had
been written about Dumas.

Finally the woman and Dumas both left the latter to
take refuge behind the wings, and the former to depart
from his life for ever.

Duquesnel, Chilly, Berton and the whole company
were in terror when the curtain was about to be raised.
They expected a warm reception and they got it Ber-
ton, who was playing the part of Kean, could not make
his voice heard beyond the footlights. For a moment
there was a question of cancelling the performance.

Then Sarah Bernhardt, in the first big role of her
career that of Anna Danby came upon the stage, and,
from the first words, a hush settled over the house. Her
glorious voice filled the theatre.

Calm and unflurried, though in reality intensely nerv-
ous, Sarah continued speaking her part. The words of
the poet were given their exact intonation, every syllable

134 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

distinct from its neighbour, and fell upon the breathless
house like the limpid notes of a flute.

When she had finished, there was at first silence, and
then a roar of approval. Sixty students, their hands
locked together, rushed round the house and threatened
to invade the stage. Sarah, appalled, believed it was a
demonstration against her. Her cue came to leave the
stage. She rushed off and up to her dressing-room,
whence she could dimly hear the unceasing roar from
the theatre.

Duquesnel, rushing in, found her white as a sheet with
terror. Duquesnel himself was pale, and perspiring in
great drops.

"Cornel" he said to Sarah, extending his hand, "they
want youl"

Sarah shuddered and shrank backwards.

"Come I" said Duquesnel again, impatiently. "I tell you
they want you! Hark, cannot you hear them calling?"

Through the open door the din from the house came
with greater volume. Sarah could not distinguish a
word.

"They are mad about you, child!" cried Duquesnel, as
he saw she did not believe him. "They will not let the
play go on until you go on and speak to them!"

Then Sarah understood that this was not failure. It
was triumph, success, glory 1 She took Duquesnel's arm
and went hesitatingly on to the stage, not even noticing
that she was still attired in the kimono which she used
as a wrap between the acts.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 135

When she appeared before the curtain pandemonium
broke loose. "Sarah I" "Sarah!" "Our Sarah!" the
audience yelled.

And "Our Sarah" she was to the populace of Paris
from that day onwards.

She was famous. She hurried back into the wings and
brought on Berton Senior and they gave him an ovation
too. But always there was the chant : "Sarah!" "Our
Sarah!"

The students were mad. Sarah resolved to win them
over to Dumas, and sent word for him to come on the
stage. But Dumas had gone, suffocated by tears at what
he believed bitterly to be the assassination of his brain-
child. The next morning, when he learned the truth, he
sent Sarah a note thanking her.

Sarcey was the only critic who did not join in tfy&
chorus of praise which followed in the press. Writing
in the Courrier de la Semaine he stated:

"I have nothing to add to my previous opinion of
Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt, who, it appears, had
some success with the noisy students the other night. Her
voice is exquisite, certainly, but she is just as certainly not
an actress."

The original means Sarah took to humble Sarcey and
to bring him to her side will be described in the next chap-
ter. Meanwhile, he remained her most bitter and most
persevering critic.

CHAPTER XI

OUT of a multitude of aspiring actresses Sarah Bern-
hardt, at the age of twenty-four, had jumped into
celebrity practically in a single night The success of
Kean continued; the theatre was packed night after night.
Berton, hitherto the greatest figure on the stage of the
Odeon, himself had to bow before the woman whose
genius he had been the first to perceive.

Their intimacy continued^though necessarily in secret,
on account of Berton's other attachments. Success
turned Sarah's shock head a little, but for many months
she remained faithful to the loyal man who had be-
friended her and had made her victory possible. Their
Idyll was the talk of the theatre. No one then dreamed
how bitterly she would turn against him in later years.

She had no lack of other admirers. They flocked
round her. There was Jules Gamier, and most notable
of all perhaps Francois Coppee, whose genius Sarah dis-
covered in an odd way.

She was dining in the house of a friend and was intro-
duced to a small, pale-faced young man, whose wealth of
dark hair was smoothed back from his brow. "He had,"
Sarah told me later, "the eyes of a dreamer and the head
of a saint"

136

The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Coppee shyly shook her hand, and seemed to want to
say something, but to be too bashful.

"Come, Frangois," urged Madame Agar, the great
tragedienne, who was the hostess, "you have been want-
ing to meet Mile. Bernhardt for weeks, and now that you
have the chance you are dumb I"

"He has written a play/' she explained to Sarah, "and
he thinks that you should be the one to play in it."

"It was written for you," said the young poet, simply.
Frangois Coppee was then unknown, and Sarah had
never heard his name before. But the subtle compli-
ment of writing a play round her touched her heart, and
she determined to grant him his wish.
"\Ye will hear it at once!" she decided.
Two hours later she had enthusiastically promised to
make Duquesnel and Chilly produce the piece, which was
called Le Passant, and within four months it was pro-
duced at a benefit matinee. Then, after it had proved
an enormous success, it was included in the regular Odeon
repertoire, which it has never since left

If Kean had been a triumph for Sarah, Le Passant was
a vindication. There had been many to hint that her
success in Kean was only an accident due to fortuitous
circumstances and to the fact that she was popular with
the students who thronged the theatre on the first night.
But when she carried all before her in Le Passant, she
proved herself to be the great actress that she really was.
Every critic except the dour Francisque Sarcey, who
still persisted in ignoring her talent, joined in an en-

138 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

thusiastic chorus of praise, and they said much more
about her than they did about Agar, who was in reality
the star of the piece.

Duquesnel was triumphant; Chilly was delighted.
They had found another star worthy of the greatness
of their theatre. They were summoned to play Le Pas-
sant at Court, in the magnificent setting of the Tuileries.
The Emperor Louis Napoleon, after the performance,
descended from his throne and kissed Sarah on both
cheeks, afterwards presenting her with a diamond brooch
set with the Imperial initials.

This brooch was not among the property of the
tragedienne which was recently sold by auction in Paris,
and I believe there was a story that, pressed for funds
during a trip to London after the revolution, she pawned
it and never subsequently regained possession of it. She
was like that all her life. Always the desperate need
for money, always the large extravagance, the royal ex-
penditures that she could not afiord !

This was the age of literary giants. Neither politics,
nor even religion, had half the power to stir the passions
of the educated masses that a literary war between two
editors or two dramatists possessed. The two great
rivals for public popularity were Victor Hugo and Alex-
andre Dumas the elder, and there was a deal of fanati-
cism in the fervour of their respective partisans. Public
meetings were held denouncing one or the other. Victor
Hugo's political martyrdom was of recent memory, and
this gentle character, this splendid genius, was the prey

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 139

of attacks which were at once unscrupulous and false.
Newspapers were started by chiefs of the different liter-
ary factions, and dozens of duels, some of them mortal,
resulted from the wanton attacks on the reputations of
two of the greatest men of the time.

Sarah's first meeting with Victor Hugo occurred about
a week after the premiere of Le Passant, in which she
took the adolescent male role of Zanetto. It suited her
to perfection, for she had retained her boyish slimness
and her general allure of gammerie.

After the performance she was presented to Hugo,
who had been watching the play from the depths of a
loge. Public opinion was running high in Paris at the
moment, and it was considered inadvisable that either
Victor Hugo or Alexandre Dumas should show them-
selves in public.

Sarah had ignorantly allowed herself to be carried
away by the fulminations, of the Dumas clique at the
Odeon, and actually shuddered when she held her hand
out to Hugo to be kissed.

"Ah, mademoiselle," remarked the great author, with
a sad smile, "I see that my greatest trial is to come in
your prejudice against me I"

Sarah was touched, and could not bring herself to be-
lieve that this meek man, with the deep marks of suffer-
ing about his eyes, was really the monster his enemies
would have the world believe. It was currently ru-
moured that Hugo was an anarchist, that he had deserted
his wife, that he had five mistresses at one and the same

140 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

time, and that his life consisted of one immorality after
another. He was accused of many political crimes also
and with as much reason.

"I am my own judge of men, monsieur," said Sarah.

Victor Hugo bowed low, muttered a word of adieu
and later wrote Sarah as follows :

"MADEMOISELLE,

"Yesterday I was presented to you, trembling
lest you might not accede to my request and play in my
Ruy Bias. But I was tongue-tied in the presence of your
beauty and your charity; I, who am a man of words, was
dumb. I pray you, see Chilly; he knows my wishes. Be-
lieve, mademoiselle, in my sincere admiration,

"VICTOR HUGO."

Sarah saw Chilly, only to be informed by him that it
had been decided to put off the revival of Ruy Bias until
the following season. Instead, when Le Passant was
finished, Sarah played as star in three plays which defi-
nitely established her position as one of the greatest
actresses of the period. These plays were L'Autre, a
delicious comedy by Georges Sand, Le Batard and
Theuriet's Jean Marie.

Before she could play Ruy Bias, the war of 1870 broke
out.

Before we go into the war experiences of Sarah Bern-
hardt, experiences which, moreover, forged her charac-
ter into a species of flexible steel, two episodes must

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 141

be mentioned which have been published before, but
which, in my opinion, have been scurrilously misinter-
preted. One refers to the fire in her flat in the rue
Auber, near the Opera, and the other to the serious ill-
ness that followed one of Sarah's everlasting practical
jokes which this time took the form of trying to make
the world believe that she was dead 1

Sarah had, as before stated, taken a seven-room flat
in the rue Auber which, with the aid of certain of her
family, who were now only too willing to resume their
relationship with her, she had somewhat luxuriously fur-
nished. That in this connection she went heavily into
debt to various furniture dealers, decorators and the like
I do not doubt, for such became her invariable practice
in later life. From the day she jumped into fame, she
was invariably surrounded by dealers anxious to sell her
all sorts of things, from jewelry to houses, and from
pianos to horses and carriages. These men knew that
her salary at the Odeon was still only 160 francs per
month, on which she could certainly barely afford an
attic. They knew also that the income she received from
her father's estate had been greatly diminished, and was
now less than 200 francs monthly.

With less than 500 francs twenty pounds a month,
and with the inevitable extra expenses incidental to her
career, what could Sarah Bernhardt be expected to af-
ford? Her mother could spare her nothing. Her aunt
Rosine, in an effort to placate the girl for the many
slights of childhood, had given her two ponies and a

The Real Sarah Bernhardt

smart little carriage, but this, at the same time, cost a
good deal to keep up. None of her other relatives gave
her anything. When she appealed to them they would
say: "Why do you ask us? You are a famous actress,
and famous actresses can always have money!"

How true that was, Sarah had early found out I do
not think it was any particular regard for morality which
kept her from treading the path so many of her sister
actresses were obliged to tread, and from procuring her-
self one or more rich protectors; it was rather that
Sarah's whole life now was bound up with the stage, and
that in her love-affairs she consequently never strayed be-
yond its charmed circle.

I do not say that Sarah Bernhardt was any less or any
more "immoral" and we must try and remember, we
readers of a different race, that the moral code of 1870
was not that of to-day than were the half-dozen other
leading actresses of the time; but I do assert that she
never formed a liaison merely for the sake of the protec-
tion and wealth it could give her.

When Sarah loved, when this brilliant woman gave
herself, it was always for her art, and to someone who
could assist her in the material realisation of her lofty
and ambitious dreams. Such a thing as forming an alli-
ance merely to rid herself of the burden of poverty
probably never even entered her mind, which was always
lifted above the sordid things of life. But when, as in
the case of Pierre Berton, she was offered the love of a
great and a noble character, or when, as in the case of

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 143

Damala, she was swept off her feet by a romantic pas-
sion, she succumbed willingly enough.

A list of the men whom Sarah Bernhardt loved and
by whom she was loved reads like a biographical 'index
of the great Frenchmen of the nineteenth century. It
includes actors, painters, sculptors, architects, cartoon-
ists, poets, authors, and playwrights, but not one idle
rich man or rich man's son!

It is to be doubted whether Berton, Chilly or Duquesnel
helped her to furnish the flat in the rue Auber, and it is
therefore somewhat of a 'mystery how she managed to
assemble the strange setting which framed her at this
period of her life. Her taste was all Louis XV, and
quaint bowlegged chairs and tables were scattered round
her in great disorder.

Sarah's was ever a careless nature and, being ex-
tremely imperious as well as chronically penniless, she
"C5ul3"riot Keep a maid. She had her aged grandmother
living with her for a period, and she had taken her baby
from its hired nurse and installed him in a nursery at her
own home. The child took up the grandmother's time,
and the household work seldom got done, except when
Regine, Sarah's wild and hoydenish little sister, could be
persuaded upon to do her share.

"I shall never forget my first visit to Sarah's flat," said
my husband to me once. "It was on a Saturday after-
noon; we were going over a part together, and I had
promised to finish the recital at Sarah's home. I ar-
rived about three o'clock, and was met at the door by a

144 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

tumble-haired whirlwind in an old chemise and skirt,
whom I with difficulty recognised as Regine, Sarah's little
sister. Regine looked as if she had not had a wash for
a week, and perhaps she hadn't. She had great smudges
of grime on her face, and her hands were black.

"She dragged me into the salon, and here I got an-
other shock, for the room was in the most frightful mess
you can imagine. Empty wine bottles rolled about on
the carpet; the remains of a meal stood partly on the
mantelshelf and partly on the table, all mixed up with
sheets of manuscript, which I saw were books of the plays
which Sarah had appeared in. Photographs in gilt
frames were here and there, most of them tumbled on
their faces, and over all was a thick layer of dust. I
had to dirty two of my handkerchiefs before one of the
chairs could be trusted not to soil my trousers.

"From another room a baby kept up a wail, and I
could hear Sarah talking to it, trying to calm it. Sarah's
child was then nearly five years old, but had the devel-
opment of a normal child of three.

"When Sarah finally appeared, it was in a long smock
covered with paint and grease. Her hair was done any-
how, and her wide-set eyes sparkled with fun as she
viewed my distaste for her surroundings."

During all the time Sarah and he remained intimate
friends, Pierre told me, he could never bring himself to
set foot again in her home.

"It spoiled all my conceptions of her," he said. "In

The Real Sarah Bernhardt H5

the theatre she was such a fairylike, delightful creature.
One could not help loving her. But at home 1"

One night, after a gay supper following the theatre,
Sarah returned home to find her flat, in a building situ-
ated at the corner of the rue Auber and the Boulevard
Haussmann, in flames. The fire had started in her own
apartment, from a candle incautiously left burning by a
maid-of-all-work who occasionally came to clean up.
The blaze had been discovered shortly before midnight,
and at one o'clock in the morning, when Sarah arrived,
it was still confined to three rooms of the flat, but showed
symptoms of spreading, in spite of the efforts of the fire-
men.

To her horror, Sarah discovered that nobody knew
whether her baby had been saved or not!

There had been nobody but Maurice in the flat when
she had left it for the theatre that night, with the ex-
ception of the charwoman, who had long since gone.
The grandmother and Regine were both absent in the
country. Unless one of the firemen had seen and res-
cued the child, therefore, there was every chance that
it was inside the burning building.

The flat was of peculiar construction, because of the
angle of the two streets. One end of it was disconnected
from the other by a passage-way which had doors at both
ends. The fire had started on the rue Auber side, and
though it had spread upwards and downwards, it had
not jumped across the court in the rear, or worked

146 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

around the corner to the Boulevard Haussmann side, in
which was the nursery.

Sarah took all this in at a glance. Her intense horror
and dread of fire was not even thought of. Brushing
aside those who tried to hold her back, she dashed into
the Boulevard Haussmann entrance, ran up the stairs
and into her flat. Groping her way through the smoke
to the nursery, she found her son safe and sound in a
deep sleep. She wrapped him in a blanket and came
down with him into the street. There she collapsed,
and was ill for two days.

When she was well enough to hear the news, they told
her that the whole building had been burned down and
that, but for her courageous intervention, her child would
undoubtedly have been burned to death.

The best proof that Sarah even then possessed a num-
ber of jealous enemies was the statement openly made in
the theatrical world that, weighed down with debt, she
had caused the fire herself in order to collect the insur-
ance.

This story, which has since been still more widely
spread, is refuted by the following two facts : firstly, if
Sarah had caused the fire, she would hardly have left
her baby to run the risk of being burned to death ; sec-
ondly, she had not yet paid the premium on the insurance,
and it was consequently null and void. Instead of her
collecting from the insurance company, it was this com-
pany, La Fonciere, as the proprietor of a flat set on fire
through carelessness, which collected from Sarah.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 147

She was forced to pay the fabulous sum of forty thou-
sand francs in damages, which she was enabled to do
by the proceeds of a benefit performance at the Odeon,
at which Adelina Patti, then at the height of her fame,
sang.

The receipts of this benefit were more than the neces-
sary forty thousand francs, and with the remainder
Sarah was able to take a flat at No. 4, rue de 1' Arcade.
It was furnished, however; and Sarah was still without
the means to furnish a flat for herself until her late
father's man of affairs came and proposed to arrange a
cash payment to her out of her father's estate providing
she would insure her life in his favour for 250,000 francs.
This was done, and Sarah rented a large flat at the cor-
ner of the rue de Rome, almost opposite the one which
had been burned. This she was careful to insure im-
mediately.

The other episode for which Sarah was much criti-
cised was her famous practical joke at the Odeon, after
a quarrel with Duquesnel.

A call-boy rushed through the theatre screaming:
"Bernhardt is dead I Bernhardt is dead I"

With one accord the entire cast rushed off the stage
to Sarah's dressing-room, where they were met by an
extraordinary sight.

Sarah was reclining, dressed completely in white, on a
flat couch placed in the middle of the floor. Her hands
were crossed over her bosom, which appeared to be mo-
tionless, and a red stain was visible on her chin and neck.

148 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

At the four corners of the couch were placed gigantic
candles, like the clerges used in churches.

Who had placed her like that? Nobody knew. Her
dressing-maid was in hysterics, and could not be ques-
tioned. Duquesnel came in and, taking in the tableau in
a glance, burst into tears.

The performance was stopped and the curtain rung
down. A doctor and an undertaker were hurriedly sent
for, and the audience was informed by the grief-stricken
Duquesnel that "Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt had sud-
denly passed away."

Then, and then only, did Sarah- sit up, kick over the
candles with a sweep of her legs, and amaze and scan-
dalise the mourners by going into screams of helpless
laughter. Duquesnel was white with anger. Running to
his office, he wrote and signed a note cancelling her con-
tract, and stating that after that night her services would
not be required.

Sarah threw the note in his face and flung herself out
of the theatre. For hours she drove about in the Champs
Elysees, careless of the falling snow. Next day Du-
quesnel sent her a note that, on reconsideration, she
would be permitted to return, but that an apology would
be expected.

A few hours later an emissary from Sarah arrived at
the theatre. "She will not come back until you ask her
to do so on your knees 1" he told Duquesnel. - The latter,
realising that he stood in danger of losing his most popu-
lar star, went to Sarah's home and apologised. Sarah

The Real Sarah Bernhardt *49

reconsidered her remarks about making him get on his
knees, and admitted that she had only meant to play a
little joke, and had had no idea that it would go as far
as it had. There, except for satirical comments on the
"crazy Bernha'rdt" in the weekly papers, the matter
ended.

CHAPTER XII

SARAH was twenty-six years old when war was declared
between France and Germany. At three o'clock in the
afternoon of July 19, 1870, 1, a child still in short frocks,
was present with my mother at her apartment in the rue
de Rome.

A rehearsal was in progress for some play, the name
of which I have forgotten, and Sarah was reading the
script in her beautiful, expressive voice, running her hand
through my hair as she did so, when a servant came in
and announced that she was wanted at the door.

"What is it?" Sarah demanded, angry at the inter-
ruption.

"A messenger from the Foreign Ministry," said the
servant. "He is in a great hurry and has instructions to
deliver his message to none but yourself, madame, per-
sonally. 1 '

Sarah laid down the manuscript and went out of the
room. Two minutes later she was back, and I can re-
member to this day how white her face was, how brilliant
her marvellous eyes. She held up her hand, in which was
a long envelope, and bade everyone be silent. The twenty
or twenty-five people present were quiet at once and
looked at her expectantly.

"We have declared war !" she cried, and the echo of

150

The Real Sarah Earnhardt

that golden voice, vibrating with emotion, is with me yet

At once the room was in a buzz of excitement. Every-
body was speaking at once. Theophile Gautier, the book-
worm, who was present, made his voice heard through
the din.

"They are mad rnadl" he exclaimed. Then he went
to Bernhardt.

"From whom comes your information, mademoiselle?"
he asked.

"From Captain Lescouve, deputy of the chef du cabi-
net of Monsieur Ollivier."

Ollivier was the Premier who had declared war under
the pressure of the "imbecile emperor."

Jane Essler, a famous artiste of her time, who had been
sitting in a chair lazily watching the scene with an ex-
pression of calm indifference, suddenly jumped to her
feet.

"Come, let us go to the Boulevards!" she cried.

"Aux boulevards!" We were swept away by excite-
ment.

"No; let us go to the Odeon!" shouted Sarah, and
this new suggestion met with a frenzy of approval.

"Al'Odeon! Al'Odeon! Five la guerre!"

When we came down from the flat the Boulevard
Haussmann, or the street now known by that name, was
alive with people. Any passage of vehicles was impos-
sible, so we went on foot through the rue Auber as far as
the Opera.

Here there was an enormous crowd. The great Place

1 52 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

was literally surging with people. On the walls of the
Opera itself huge posters had been pasted but a few
minutes before. I remember that some of our party
tore them down and stuffed them into their pockets as
souvenirs. The posters explained the" abrupt action of
the, Government, and enjoined the people to remain calm.

"Victory is assured," was one phrase that stands out.
in my mind.

Carried along by the crowd, we were swept down the
Avenue de 1' Opera. Opposite the Theatre Frangaise was
another huge crowd. Marie Lloyd an actress, who, by
the way, had been Sarah's competitor at the Conserva-
toire, and who had gained the first prize which Sarah
had coveted was standing by the statue of Moliere, sing-
ing the Marseillaise. Every time she came to
"Marchons! Marchonsl" the thousands of people pres-
ent took up the refrain, and again and again the words of
the magnificent old song were repeated.

Our party got separated here, and only five of us man-
aged to reach the Pont Neuf, which, crossing the Seine,
led almost directly to the Odeon. I was being partly
carried, partly dragged by my mother, and was so wildly
excited that I felt no fatigue, in spite of the considerable
distance we had come.

An empty fiacre passed. The poet, Robert de Mon-
tesquiou, then a boy of nineteen, but even at that time
one of Sarah's firm friends, hailed it. The cocker
looked at him insolently.

"A I'Odeon!" said Robert

The Real Sarah Bernhardt *53

"It is five francs I" replied the cocker.

The distance was not more than seven hundred yards,
and the fare ordinarily should have been only one franc.
De Montesquieu was indignant and started a violent pro-
test, but suddenly the cocker caught sight of Sarah Bern-
hardt

"It is 'our Sarah'?" he exclaimed. "Then I'm a dog!
Come, I will take you all, and for nothing!"

I remember that Sarah climbed up on the box next to
the old coachman and gave him two resounding kisses, one
on each bronzed cheek. It appeared that the cocker
was a regular subscriber at the Odeonl

When we arrived at the theatre we hurried round to
the stage-door and trooped up into the wings* There we
found Chilly, Duquesnel and others talking on the stage
in loud voices. When they saw us, they set up a shout.

"Foila Bernhardt!"

Chilly hurriedly explained that the Government had
requested that the theatre should be reserved that night
for a patriotic demonstration, at which some of its mem-
bers would be present.

"The Emperor will be here also," he went on, "and
has specially requested that you- will open the proceedings
by singing the Marseillaise."

The doors opened at six o'clock. By 6.30 the theatre
was packed. The speeches were to begin an hour later.
Sarah was supposed to open the meeting, but when the
time came she could not be found anywhere.

Distracted officials searched the theatre high and low,

The Real Sarah Bernhardt

shouting for the missing actress. At last the meeting
began without her.

At eight o'clock Pierre Berton walked in through the
stage-entrance, followed by Sarah. Berton looked as
black as a thunder-cloud. Sarah's eyes were flashing,
and red spots of temper were on her cheeks. Her friends
recognised the signals and the word was passed around:
"Something has gone wrong' between Pierre and Sarah
, . . they have had a row."

Sarah went straight to Duquesnel, who began scolding
her for being late. But she cut him short

"I have acted for the last time with 'that man!" she
declared, pointing to Berton.

Pierre looked on bitterly. (All this I had years later,
of course, from friends who saw the scene. I had been
sent to bed after my fatiguing afternoon.)

"What is the matter?" asked Duquesnel, puzzled but
not despairing, for he knew Sarah and her fits of temper,
although he feared her obstinacy.

"He is disloyal! He is a pro-German!"

Pierre Berton darted forward with a loud protest.

"It is a lie!" he shouted angrily. "She asked me to
come on the stage and sing the Marseillaise with her,
and I said I would not, because I disapprove of the war
and of the crazy Emperor who has declared it, as does
every sensible man in all France. But I am not dis-
loyal ! I am not pro-German I"

Sarah refused to listen. "You hear him?" she cried.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 155

"He admits it himself! I will not appear with him
again ! I will not act with traitors I"

At this remark flung at him with a hiss of a whip-lash
by the woman he loved and whose career he had made,
Berton turned away hiding his face in his arm. Then
he walked out of the theatre and was seen no more that
night.

A famous journalist of the time, de Girardin, was
making a fiery speech, the gist of which was that within
a fortnight our troops must be in Berlin*

"A Berlin!" howled the crowd, mad with frenzy. And
then, glorious in its full-toned strength, came the voice
of Sarah, singing the Marseillaise.

She was standing at the back of the dress circle, and
had not been noticed until she began to sing. She was
dressed in a white robe with a green girdle a costume
taken from one of her plays and standing there, as
those inspiring notes issued from her splendid throat,
she personified the very spirit of France.

"Allans, enfants, de la patrie . . ."

The whole audience was on its feet singing, but ever
above that volume of sound rose the golden tones of
Sarah Bernhardt. Hers was not a singing voice, but
now it rang out pure and clear as a bell.

Just as a cfystal glass, tapped with the finger-nail,
will be heard above the din of a great railway station,
so was Sarah Bernhardt's voice heard above the din and
uproar of the Odeon that night.

When she left the theatre, bands of students seized

156 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

her and carried her shoulder high along the Boulevard
St. Michel, and across the Pont de la Cite to the Place de
Notre Dame, where still another demonstration was in
progress. Again she sang the Marseillaise, and then
"Mourir four la Patrie" and other patriotic songs.

She was exhausted when she reached home, and had
caught a bad cold, which kept her indoors for Several
days. During this period, however, messengers arrived
almost every hour bringing her the news.

Paris, they said, was full of marching troops. The
city was still in the throes of excitement. TKe Opera
was giving patriotic performances every night, at which
Marie Sass was singing the Marseillaise from the balcony,
so that all Paris could join in.

The Emperor had gone to the front. The first clash
had occurred sixty miles south of Mayence.

The theatres were still open, but there was talk of
closing them. The actors were organising a volunteer
corps, and some had gone already to the front, but there
was a lack of uniforms.

MacMahon had sent word from Reichshoffen th^t all
was well; the morale was fine; they would be in Berlin
in a few weeks 1

The papers were talking about^a rumoured big vic-
tory. The Germans in Paris were not to be interned, but
were to be kept to do the work of the city.

Sarah Bernhardt shared the popular belief that victory
was in sight, that the war was all but over. All the news-

The Real Sarah Bernhardt

papers, every lounger on the boulevards said it so why
should she not believe it to be true?

She went on playing as usual at the Odeon, singing the
Marseillaise whenever requested to do so, but she ad-
hered to her resolution not to play with Pierre Berton;
and Duquesnel, deciding that discretion was the better
part of valour, had carefully arranged the bill so that
they would not be called upon to act in the same pieces.

The two seldom met and never spoke. Berton came
rarely to the "theatre ; he was engaged in secret work,
which some declared was of a revolutionary nature, but
it turned out later that he had organised a corps of vol-
unteers amongst the theatrical people out of work, and
was drilling them on the fortifications! Sarah did not
know of this at the time.

Victor Hugo, of course, had disappeared from Paris,
where his last visit had been made only under pain of
instant arrest, if seen; for he had been banished from the
capital for his revolutionary writings. But among
the papers of Hugo, which were found at his death, was
a leg:er from Pierre Berton, written in August 1870, a
month after the declaration of war, and smuggled out of
Paris, in which Berton appealed to Hugo to "return and
save France!"

And France was in need of saving I No longer were
the boulevards filled with maddened patriots, excited by
wine and shouting of victory; instead, these same patriots
walked about with a grave air, or joined squads of men

158 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

under training; and when they spoke there was no
bravado, but only great determination.

Wissembourg, with the defeat and death of General
Douay, had been the first event to startle the Parisian
out of his self-satisfaction and ignorance. Then, two
days later, came the defeat which definitely turned the
tide against France the route of Marshal MacMahon,
which army was literally cut to pieces at Freischwiller
and Reichshoffen. A human torrent of four hundred
thousand men poured over the fields of France. The
country was invaded ; Paris was in danger.

Paris in danger! The Parisians were not so much
inclined to laugh as they had been at first. It was
ridiculous, of course it would take a million and a half
men to "besiege Paris successfully but still, but still,
there was Wissembourg, and the undeniable evidence of
Freischwiller and Reichshoffen !

Count de Palikao, the new head of the Government,
was a friend of Sarah's; that is, he had seen and spoken to
her once or twice, and would stop and bow when he met
her. One day he sent for her from his office, at the
Chamber of Deputies.

"Mademoiselle," he said, taking her hand, "you can
do a great work for your country, if you will I"

Sarah asked him to explain. The Count then said
that the Government had noticed how enthusiasm for
the war was dying; and that something like panic was
imminent in Paris, unless optimism and hope could at once
be restored to the hearts of the people.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt

"That is your task!" he finished.

The Count's plan was for Sarah to organise a com-
mittee of artistes, authors and newspaper writers of her
acquaintance, the object of which was to instil into the
people of Paris renewed belief in the success of the cam-
paign. More patriotic performances were to be given;
patriotic posters were to be drawn up and posted; and
every member individually, whether by word of mouth
or by articles in the Press, was to affirm his or her belief
that victory was near.

Sarah undertook the task with enthusiasm. There is
no doubt now that her part in the defence of Paris was
a glorious one. There is no doubt, either, that wily old
Count de Palikao, being a general and a fine strategist
himself, was perfectly well aware even then that Paris
was doomed.

Towards the latter part of August the efforts of the
volunteer committee fell more and more flat The people
seemed to have sunk into an apathy out of which they
could be aroused, only at infrequent intervals, by ru-
mours of victories which generally turned out to be
false. When Sarah sang the Marseillaise now she met
with but a feeble response.

And then came Sedan, the overthrow of the Emperor,
and the Declaration of the Republic.

Magically, as it seemed, the whole city, which had been
shouting its plaudits of Napoleon III but a few months
ago, had turned republican. Nobody would admit to

160 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

having ever been a royalist! "Five la Republique"
sounded on all hands.

When Sarah Bernhardt arrived at the Odeon that
afternoon of September 4 there was no performance
and no rehearsal, but she could not stay away it was to
find a group of actors surrounding Pierre Berton, who,
with a hammer and chisel, was carefully chipping away
the plaster "N" from the front of the royal box.

Sarah stood and watched them for some time and then
Berton, descending from the ladder, saw her.

"Mademoiselle," he said, "I was hoping that I should
see you 1"

Sarah stood speechless. Taking her by the arm, Pierre
led her unresistingly aside.

"I leave with my regiment for the front to-night!" he
said.

"Where is your uniform?" demanded Sarah.

"You shall see it!"

Running up to his dressing-room, Berton came down
a few minutes later garbed in one of the pitifully non-
descript uniforms of the National Guard a grey kepi
with a leather peak, a white-and-blue coat and red
trousers. On his arm were three galons, showing his
rank to be that of captain.

Sarah threw her arms about his neck and kissed him
before the entire company. Before nightfall all the-
atrical Paris knew that Sarah Bernhardt and Pierre
Berton were again lovers.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 161

By now thousands of wounded were arriving in Paris,
and the temporary hospitals were totally inadequate.
Great canvas hospitals were erected on the fortifications,
but these had to be withdrawn into the city as the German
advance continued. There was an appalling lack of
trained nurses, and almost as great a lack of doctors
and surgeons.

The theatres were closed, and Sarah disappeared for
two weeks. When she re-appeared, it was in the uniform
of a nurse. She had earned her brevet from working in
one of the temporary hospitals, and even in that short
time had learned not a little of the art of caring for
wounded.

Her next act was to ask permission from the Comte de
Keratry to re-open the Odeon as a hospital. This per-
mission was readily accorded, but no beds or supplies
were forthcoming, and ft took all her energy and influence
to procure these.

She was alone in Paris. Her son had been sent to
Normandy, and her mother and aunts had left at the
same time, presumably for Normandy but in reality for
England and Holland, whither they took the baby boy.
While Sarah imagined her son safely in a small village
near Havre, he was really in London, and later at
Rotterdam.

During the siege of Paris her family left Rotterdam
and went into Germany, and at the very moment when
Sarah was caring for the wounded with untiring and

162 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

devoted energy, her baby boy, in charge of her mother
and aunts, was living in the country of the enemy at
Wiesbaden. This she did not discover until after the
siege was raised. It certainly is the best possible con-
firmation of the nationality of her mother's family.

CHAPTER XIII

SARAH grew to know at least two members of the revolu-
tionary government extremely well. One was Jules
Favre, who was given the portfolio of Foreign Affairs,
and the other Rochefort, the notorious editor of La
Lanterne, who was taken out of prison by the mob on
the night the Empire was overthrown.

Two more opposite characters it would be hard to
imagine. Favre was a man in middle life calm, rigidly
upright, a thinker and a statesman. Rochefort was little
better than a literary apache, and was the idol of the
worst quarters of Paris. His speeches were calculated
to appeal to the baser instincts of the mob ; those of Favre
were the measured words of the lawyer. Rochefort, if
he had ever seized the reins of power, might have been
another Marat; while Jules Favre, if he could not save
France from mutilation and humiliation at the Jaamds of
Germany, at least aided her in retaining her honour and
self-respect.

When Jules Favre, with Paris ringed by enemy steel
and guns capable of shelling the Opera point blank, and
its population all but starved, said to Bismarck: "Not one
foot of soil! Not one stone from our fortresses I" he
was establishing for all-time-to-come the immortal spirit
of Republican France.

163

164 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Think! Paris could have been laid in ashes on the
morrow, the whole of France ravished within a month,
the last soldier put to the sword, all without any possi-
bility of resistance and* there was found a Frenchman
who could say defiantly to Bismarck: "Not one inch of
soil I Not one stone from our fortresses!"

Who shall dim the glory of a nation like that?

If I seem to lay unwonted stress on the Franco-Prus-
sian war now a matter, even for the French, of cold,
unsentimental history it is because it occurred at per-
haps the most impressionable moment of Sarah Bern-
hardt's life, and has thus a direct bearing on our story.

We have just gone through a war so big that, although
the Armistice was signed five years ago, it seems only
yesterday. We have had living evidence ourselves of the
influences of war upon the generation which fought it.
We know how war can alter the characters of men, for we
have seen it react on our own brothers and fathers and
sisters. In France, in 1870, the women did not go to
the war as they did in those terrible years from 1914 to
1918, but they bore their share possibly the heaviest
share of suffering behind the scenes. In 1870 the army
in the field was at least on the move, engaged in active
operations; or, if it had been compelled to capitulate, it
was, at least, not hungry.- But at that time the women
T)f Paris were very nearly starving. It is hard to keep
up courage, let alone enthusiasm, on an empty stomach;
but this the women of Paris did I

As the Germans drew closer and closer to Paris and

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 165

the outer defences began to fall, the flood of wounded
that poured into the hastily-contrived hospitals increased,
until it became a matter of serious doubt whether there
were sufficient beds to hold them. Almost everything
was lacking bedding, medicines, bandages, doctors,
nurses and food.

Starting with five wounded soldiers, Sarah's hospital
in the Odeon was soon taking care of more than a
hundred. I remember visiting it with my mother during
the siege, and the frightfully fetid odour that assailed
one on entering the door still lingers in my nostrils.

The wounded lay both in the theatre proper and on
the stage. The beds were placed in great semi-circles,
leaving wide aisles between, along which the doctors and
nurses walked.

The nurses were nearly all actresses and friends of
Sarah Bernhardt whom she herself had trained. Their
efficiency, naturally, left much to be desired, but to the
wounded they seemed like ministering angels.

Among the patients were many German prisoners, and
during the siege these always had the best and choicest
food obtainable, so that when cured they could be re-
leased and sent back to their army, to refute the impres-
sion of a starving Paris!

Sarah told a story of one man, a corporal, who taunted
her on his arrival with the words: "Oh hoi I see the
stories were true ! You have nothing to eat for so long
that you are a skeleton 1"

This uncomplimentary allusion to Sarah's slimness

166 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

angered her excessively, but she went on bandaging the
man's leg, which was broken. The next day the corporal
was astonished at being served with chicken soup for his
dinner. On the following one he was given boiled eggs
and some young lamb.

"Chicken, eggs and lamb in a starving city!" he ex-
claimed. "Why, you have everything you want! All
these stories of a starving Paris, then, are untrue ?"

He did not know that Sarah's own dinner for days had
been black bread and beans, and that she had not eaten
meat for more than a month! Whatever delicacies
were brought to the hospital were for her wounded.

Her face grew thinner, but took on an added beauty.
She did not spare her frail body, but worked from early
morning until late at night More than once, when an
exceptionally late convoy of wounded arrived, she worked
all night as well.

Her character became stronger and nobler ; forged in
the fires of suffering, the metal rang true. "La Bern-
hardt" became a password of homage among the soldiers.
From a careless gamine, flattered by the adulation of the
multitude, she became a serious woman, striving only for
one thing: the alleviation of suffering among the soldiers
who were giving their all for their country,

It might be said that the war came at an opportune
moment in Sarah Bernhardt's career. It demonstrated
to her that, despite the plaudits of Paris and the flattery
of the multitude, she was only an ineffectual morsel of
the universe. It served to tame her conceit, to teach

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 167

her how insignificant individual success and glory are
compared to the welfare or suffering of a nation.

Her character became more subdued, her fits of temper
less violent and more rare. Her beauty had not suffered,
however ; rather had it been enhanced. Her eyes, always
enigmatic, had themselves gained something of the senti-
ment which animated her being. Dressed in the white
of a military nurse, with the red-and-green cross on either
arm and on her hooded cap, she was ethereally lovely.

She used to go round begging overcoats from her rich
acquaintances. The Odeon was large, coal scarce and
heating difficult. It became a proverb among the men
she knew: "Don't go down to the Odeon with your over-
coat on, or you will lose it: { la Bernhardt' will take it
for her wounded I"

Nevertheless, they were generous to her. The Min-
istry of War, established in the Palace of the Tuileries,
allowed her the same rations at those allowed to the
regular hospitals and, in fact, Sarah's personal appeals
probably obtained for her something extra.

At any rate, even in the darkest days of the siege,
Sarah Bernhardt's wounded never lacked for anything
essential. She set every woman and child of her
acquaintance to work making bandages and folding lint.
I myself worked eight hours a day so doing. How I
loved Sarah Bernhardt in those days I She seemed to me
to be glory personified.

When the siege began there were, according to official
statistics, 220,000 sheep, 40,000 oxen and 12,000 pigs

168 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

within the city limits. This, said the authorities, was
ample to provide for the wants of Paris for five or six
months. And so it would have been if they had not
forgotten that a live lamb or ox or pig needs to be fed as
well as the human beings who are subsequently to eat
theml They had brought this vast army of animals
to Paris, but they had forgotten to bring in sufficient
quantities of forage to feed them.

All the public buildings were used for storing either
food or munitions. The Opera, which had not then
been officially opened, was organised as a gigantic ware-
house by Charles Gamier, its architect, and it was dis-
covered that a river of fresh water flowed underneath
its cellar's.

Sarah Bernhardt had had her hospital in full working
order for six weeks before she discovered that all the cel-
lars underneath the Odeon were filled with boxes of cart-
ridges and cases of shells ! Since the Germans could have
shelled the Odeon point blank from the heights of Belle-
vue or Montretout, there was some excuse for the urgent
protest she made in person to Rochefort, that these muni-
tions should be removed and her wounded relieved from
the necessity of lying on a powder mine. Rochefort
saw that the necessary orders were given.

As winter dragged on, the siege became a wearisome
thing, but the courage of the Parisians could not be
daunted. Cut off from all communication with the out-
side world, and even from their fugitive armies in the
South; starving and nearly at an end of their resources,

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 169

there was nevertheless no real thought of surrender.
The Germans said Paris could not hold out a month. It
had already held out two.

The hardest thing was to keep up the spirits of the
people, and in this Sarah Bernhardt again took a leading
part. The police had closed the theatres, and many of
these, like the Odeon and the Opera, were being used for
purposes of national defence. But it was felt that some
amusements should be provided, so Pasdeloup, the famous
conductor, was asked to organise a committee of singers,
musicians and stage-folk to see if some way could not be
found of getting over the difficulty. Eventually, on
October 23, Pasdeloup gave his first concert, and shortly
afterwards Lescouve re-opened the Comedle Frangaise.

Sarah Bernhardt organised a scratch theatrical com-
pany from among those of the actors and actresses of
the Odeon who were available, rehearsed several stock
plays and gave them in the open air, for the benefit of the
troops of the National Guard, who were encamped on
the fortifications and in the parks.

In November Pierre Berton re-appeared an older,
bearded, strange-looking Berton. He had been in that
part of the army which was cut off from Paris, and had
only reached the capital by slipping past the German
sentries at the peril of his life.

"But why did you not stay in the country, where you
were safe, and where your family is.?" he was asked. It
was true his mistress and his children had long ago
escaped to Tours.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt

"What? stay out of Paris, and she here?" he de-
manded, pointing to Sarah Bernhardt.

Their intimacy continued, but- without the great pas-
sion of other days. Sarah was tender to him, but made
him see that her days and nights belonged now to the
wounded. Nevertheless, Berton complained that others
had taken his place in her heart.

There were four men, in particular, who excited his
jealousy. These were the Count of Keratry, under-sec-
retary for food supplies; Paul de Remusat, one of the
prevailing moderate elements in the new Government and
a great friend of Thiers; Rochefort, who certainly had
for Sarah a strange and somewhat uncanny attraction,
in view of his violence and his dissolute character (Sarah
says of him: "It was Rochefort who caused the downfall
of the" Empire") ; and finally Captain O'Connor, a cav-
alryman, who was a much more serious competitor for
Sarah's affections than the other three. O'Connor will
figure in these memoirs later on.

There is considerable doubt as to whether Count de
Keratry was ever a lover of Sarah Bernhardt's. He
had known her since she was a child at Grandchamps,
when he used to visit the Convent to spend an hour with
a niece, who was a pupil there. Later, he had been
introduced to her family, and by the time he received his
commission as a lieutenant of cavalry and was sent to
command a unit in the campaign of Mexico, had come to
be a rather frequent visitor in the house in the rue
Michodiere. From then on Sarah Bernhardt did not see

Sarah Bernhardt in her Studio Dress.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt

him until he returned, just before the Franco-Prussian
war, and was given an appointment on the Staff. After
the revolution he was made a prefect, with special charge
over the victualling of the city.

It was he who saw that Sarah's hospital was so well
supplied with food well supplied, that is, in comparison
with other hospitals of a similarly independent character.
During the siege Sarah saw him frequently, and he went
often to the Odeon.

He was greatly enamoured of the young actress, but
they were both too busy to give much time to each other,
and certainly their humane duties precluded any pro-
longed love-making. But Berton saw in the Count de
Kerartry's frequent visits to Sarah an intrigue that
threatened to oust him from his privileged place at her
side, and he made many heated remonstrances to that
effect.

Paul de Remusat, an author, playwright and educa-
tionalist, and withal a most supremely modest and un-
assuming man, was one of the real forces behind the
revolution, but he was not one of the popular figures in
it. He seldom spoke in public.

Sarah had been introduced to him, some months prior
to the war, by the younger Dumas. She found inordi-
nate pleasure in reading his writings, which were of an
inspiring beauty. She would go to his modest apart-
ment in the rue de Seine and sit on the floor at his feet,
one arm aver his knees, as he read to her his latest works.

It was to Paul de Remusat that Thiers, Favre, Arago,

The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Cremieux, Gambetta, Jules Simon, Ferry, Picard, Pages
and the rest of the revolutionary committee came in the
afternoon with their plan of action (that night the
Empire fell). It was de Remusat who revised this plan,
and advised them of the pitfalls that lay ahead.

He could have had anything in the gift of the new
Government. If the times had not decreed that the
President must be a military man the honour eventually
went to the Governor of Paris, General Trochu there
It no doubt in my mind that Paul de Remusat would have
been offered the highest post possible in the new order of
things. The fact that he had a "de" as prefix to his
name was another drawback, for it only needed a "de"
to convince some people of one's royalist leanings.

Eventually, it was decided to make him Master of
Fine Arts, and a committee was sent to him with this
idea in view* That evening the president of this com-
mittee, M. Theophile Besson, sent for Sarah and said to
her, despairingly: "It is no use, we cannot move him.
You are the only person on earth, mademoiselle, who can
make him change his mind!" Sarah consented to do her
best, and saw de Remusat the next day.' He asked to be
allowed twenty-four hours to think the matter over, and
he then wrote to Sarah to this effect.

"CHERE, CHERE AMI: Allow me to remain, my
charming little friend, in the shadow, where I can see so
much clearer than I would if smothered in honours 1"

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 173

In another letter a few days afterwards he said :

"You know well that you have instilled into me an
ideal of beauty too partial to be of service to the world,
which makes me prefer to avoid worldly strife and
ambitions."

Throughout her career Sarah Bernhardt seemed to
have possessed this God-given faculty of elevating the
ideals and ennobling the ambitions of men. The influ-
ence she exerted on her century in matters of art was
incalculable. To painters she would say: "If you love
me, then paint a masterpiece and dedicate it to me!"
To poets she would say: "If it is true that you love me,
you will write a poem about me that will live when we
both are dead!" And true it is that numbers of famous
verses to anonymous beauty had their inception in the
ideal which Sarah Bernhardt had succeeded in creating.

Alexandre Dumas fils once told me: "She drives me
mad when I am with her. She is all temperament and no
heart; but when she is gone, how I work! How I can
work!"

Georges Clairin threw down his tools in his studio one,
day, interrupting work on a great mural painting he was
doing for Sarah Bernhardt's house, and went in search
of Sarah. When he had found her, he remained half an
hour in silent contemplation of her .face. Finally, he
jammed his round black velvet artist's cap on his head,
turned on his heel without a word and, returning to his

174 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

studio, worked savagely on his painting until it was fin-
ished.

"Before/ 5 he told me, "it used to be absinthe; now it
is Sarah!"

Where other actresses prided themselves on their in-
fluence in politics there was a time when affairs of state
were habitually settled in the salons of the reigning
beauties Sarah, consciously or unconsciously, exerted her
influence on men of letters and art.

She would not look at a man unless he was doing
something useful with his life. She despised idlers, and
was ever at work herself. Not that she was of severe or
strictly moral character. Far from it But she used her
beauty and her undisputed hold on men in the finest way
possible: namely by inspiring and creating idealism in
the minds of the clever men who loved her. That may
have been the secret of her hold on men.

It became an axiom in the theatrical world: "If you
want an introduction to So-and-so (naming a prominent
author, playwright, or artist), go and ask Sarah Bern-
hardt."

Her influence on Pierre Berton was somewhat of a
different sort, but this was his and not her fault. Berton
had an excessively jealous temperament, as I found out
for myself later on.

Victor Hugo had returned in triumph to Paris from
his secret place of exile, and Pierre Berton was asked
to read his poem "Les Chatiments" the daring and
somewhat terrible masterpiece that is credited with hav-

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 175

ing been chiefly responsible for the spread of anti-im-
perialist feeling in France. It was a forbidden work
under the Empire and had previously only been read
in secret in the clubs.

Berton read the poem in the Theatre Lyrique, before a
great and enthusiastic crowd. Sarah refused to attend.
She still felt some bitterness against Victor Hugo, for,
though she now called herself a Republican it was dan-
gerous to term oneself anything else she had preserved
cherished memories of the Emperor, the Empress, and
the Court in which her acting had once produced a
sensation.

She had never forgotten that simple act of generous
courtesy, when the Emperor Napoleon had descended
from his throne to kiss her on the cheek, in recognition
both of her beauty and her art. He might be a prisoner
in Germany and they might call him an imbecile, but she
remembered him as a very gentle friend. And the Em-
press who had escaped from Paris in the carriage of an
American dentist it was she who had commanded the
performance at the Tuileries, and it was she who had
personally sent a note of thanks to Sarah at the theatre
on the following day.

Sarah's memories of Royalty were inspiring. And she
had hardly become accustomed to Republicanism when
the existing Government was swept away with the Capitu-
lation of Paris, and the horrors of the Commune intro-
duced.

Sarah saw Paris set on fire by the maniacs who said

176 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

they were "saving the nation" ; saw many of her friends
in political circles shot dead without trial; feared, like
many others, that the Terror was come again. And, to
add to her trouble, a man whom she had been at some
pains to make an enemy was appointed chief of police !

This man was Raoul Rigault, a youngster of thirty.
He had been one of that student band who established
Sarah's fame, and had presumed on this fact to send her
loving verses, and on one occasion a play in bad verse,
which she promptly returned through Berton as being
"unfit for her to handle, let alone read." Rigault was
furious and swore vengeance.

When the Commune came, Rigault was appointed
Prefect of Police, and he visited Sarah at her flat, situated,
after another move on her part, in the Boulevard
Malesherbes.

"It depends upon you, mademoiselle," he said,
"whether there is war or peace between us."

Sarah, angered beyond measure at this insult, sprang
up and struck him on the face with the palm of her hand.
Then she ordered him to be shown the door.

When Berton came later in the day, he wanted to seek
out Rigault at once and kill him. "The rat!" he kept
declaring, "the rat I"

He did, in fact, visit the Prefecture with the idea of
meeting Rigault and "calling him out," but could not find
him. Before the Communist could wreak his threatened
vengeance on Sarah, the Commune was over and he was
executed.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt i?7

Immediately after the signature of peace, Sarah made
a long and exceedingly hazardous voyage to Hamburg,
via Holland, where she met her family and saw her baby
boy again. She furiously abused her mother and her
aunt for daring to take her son to Germany during that
country's war on France, and after their return to Paris
she refused for some time to have anything to do with
her Aunt Rosine, whom she regarded as responsible for
the outrage. She brought her son back with her.

Among her acquaintances before the war had been a
man named James O'Connor, a Frenchman of Irish
descent. She had had little to do with him at this epoch,
and had known him only as a frequenter of several
literary salons which she had been in the habit of
attending.

Just before the siege of Paris, Captain O'Connor
he had been given a commission in the cavalry was
brought to her hospital at the Odeon, suffering from a
bullet wound in the hip. Though his recovery was rapid
his convalescence was long.

Sarah tended him with her own hands, and their
friendship ripened into a warm intimacy. With Berton
more and more involved in politics, and passing nearly
all his evenings at meetings in the home of Victor Hugo,
Sarah saw a lot of the dashing Captain O'Connor, and
it was he who, when the Communist rebellion broke out,
arranged her escape from Paris with her son, and in-
stalled her in a cottage between St. Germain and
Versailles.

178 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Almost every day they took long gallops together and
once, when riding through the Park of Versailles, they
were shot at by a crazy communist who had hidden him-
self behind a tree. The bullet missed its mark and,
turning in his saddle, Captain O'Connor mortally
wounded the man. Then he made as if to ride coolly on.

"But you are not going to leave him like that?" asked
Sarah, sick at heart, pointing to the man who lay dying
on the grass.

"Why not," asked O'Connor, coldly. "He would
have worried himself precious little about you and me
if he had succeeded in killing us. Every day friends in
my regiment are killed in this way by some of these mad-
men in ambush."

Sarah slipped off her horse and supported the man's
head in her arms, where a few seconds later he expired.
Then, remounting with a stony face, she gave her hand
to O'Connor.

"What's the matter?" he asked in cynical amazement.

"I will not ride any further with an assassin!" she
said, and then galloped away.

This unjust accusation deeply mortified O'Connor,
especially as Sarah refused to see him the next day when
he rode over to offer renewed explanations and to exact
an apology.

CHAPTER XIV

THE Paris papers were full of it; the literary and the-
atrical world talked of nothing else : Victor Hugo was to
be played again !

It was Ruy Bias, naturally, that had been chosen for
the opening of the Hugo season, and it was at the Odeon
that the play was to be given. Duquesnel and Chilly,
after many long conferences, had come to the conclusion
that the decision as to who was to be the chief interpreter
of the piece should be left to the' illustrious dramatist
himself. Sarah Bernhardt saw Chilly.
"I must play Ruy Bias!" she said to him.
"But, mademoiselle, there are others whose claim is
greater than yours," said the little manager. "Monsieur
Hugo cannot and will not be influenced in his choice 1 I
can tell you nothing until I have seen him."
Sarah Bernhardt went to Pierre Berton.
"You are a friend of Victor Hugo's," she said. "Go
to him and persuade him that I must play Ruy Bias!"

She told me years afterwards: "I felt that it was to
be the supreme effort of my life. Something within me
told me that, if only I could play this masterpiece, both
fame and fortune would come at once. I was so sure
of this that I determined nothing should stand in my
way and no other artiste."

179

i8o The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Berton returned jubilant from his interview with
Victor Hugo.

"The Master says you are toute indiquee!" he told the
enchanted actress; "he has had you in mind from the
beginning."

Rehearsals lasted a month, and Victor Hugo was at
each one of them, an indomitable figure of middle height,
his grey wiry hair tumbling over his ears and collar.
Generally he sat in the front row of the orchestra, but
on occasions a chair was placed for him in the wings, and
from there he would jump up excitedly whenever he saw
something which disagreed with his theories as to how
the play should be produced, and would spend valuable
minutes trying to demonstrate the right way in which a
passage should be rendered.

One evening, after rehearsals were over, he had a new
idea concerning the part of Ruy Bias. Without stop-
ping to think, he dispatched this hasty message to Sarah
Bernhardt: "Come at once and we will talk it over."

"What! Does he think I am his valet ?" angrily
exclaimed Sarah, and wrote as much to him. In an hour
or so she received the whimisical reply: "No, mademoi-
selle, it is I who am your valet ! Victor Hugo."

This, of course, appeased Sarah, and when they met
the next day they were on cordial terms enough. Two
days later Victor Hugo brought Sarah a huge bunch of
roses, which he presented to "My Queen of Spain"
(Sarah's part in Ruy Bias was that of the Queen) .

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 181

"I know where those roses came from!" declared
Sarah, accepting them suspiciously.

"From my garden, mademoiselle!" said Victor Hugo,
with a bow.

"No, they came from the garden of Paul Meurice!
It is impossible that there should be another rose-bush
like that in all France 1"

Hugo was extremely disconcerted, the more so as his
friend Meurice, who was standing by, burst into a hurri-
cane of laughter.

"I told you she would know them! I told you!" he
roared.

Hugo quickly recovered his habitual wit.

"They are, mademoiselle, the finest roses in all
Europe!" he assured Sarah solemnly. "I offered to buy
them, and Paul would not sell; then I tried to steal them,
and he caught me. So I made him give them to me,
since with these roses existing it was manifestly impos-
sible for me to give you any others. 1 '

Sarah accepted the gift, which was one of a series
she received from the great author. Then Hugo said:

"You know, mademoiselle, if we go by the standards
of your ancestors, the Dutch, we are not really friends!"

"Why not?" asked Sarah innocently.

"Well, the Dutch have a saying that no friendship is
cemented till the two friends in turn break bread together
under their own roofs."

"Then come to dinner with me to-night and you, too,
Paul?" she said, turning to Meurice.

i8a The Real Sarah Bernhardt

"But I cannot do that I have an important engage-
ment!" said Victor Hugo.

Meurice, his most intimate friend, who knew all his
engagements, turned to him in astonishment, and Sarah,
seeing his astonishment, naturally thought that Hugo was
merely making an excuse so that he would not have to
dine with her. She turned haughtily away. But Hugo,
running after her, laid his hand on her arm in suppli-
cation.

"Do not be angry, ma petite Reine" he said, "my
engagement is with you 1"

"With me!"

"Yes, I have told the cook to prepare a great dinner
to-night, and you are my guest!"

Sarah regarded him suspiciously. Stories of his liber-
tinage had been current for years.

"Whom else have you invited?" she demanded.

"Oh," answered Hugo, vaguely waving his hand, "er
lots of people Duquesnel, Meurice here, and and
others."

Sarah caught the amazed expression on Meurice's face
and, excusing herself, sought out Duquesnel.

"Has Victor Hugo invited you to a grand dinner at
his house to-night?" she asked.

"No why?"

Sarah did not answer, but returned to Hugo and held
out her hand, smiling.

"Very well, then, it is understood I shall come at
eight o'clock."

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 183

Hugo was overjoyed and overwhelmed her with
thanks. He was completely taken aback, however, when
Sarah Bernhardt arrived at the time mentioned with
four friends!

The table had been laid for two, as Sarah had expected.
But Hugo treated the matter as a great joke, entertained
them delightfully until midnight with stories of his
travels, and went about for days afterwards telling his
friends what a "smart woman that Bernhardt was!"

There was never anything but ordinary friendship, and
much mutual admiration, between Sarah Bernhardt and
Victor Hugo, despite all the rumours that were current
then and have been bruited around since. The principal
reason for this was, of course, that Sarah was a young
woman, while Hugo was nearing the end of his long and
active career.

''Victor Hugo?" she answered me once. "A won-
derful vieillard (old man) ."

Ruy Bias was produced at the Odeon on January 26,
1872, before the most brilliant audience the theatre had
ever seen. Every seat had been taken days in advance,
and hundreds crowded into the space behind the back
rows and stood up throughout the entire performance,

Sarah Bernhardt triumphed. She often told me that
never again in her long career did she act so well as she
did that night. And Paris agreed with her. She was a
literal sensation.

When the play was over, she was forced to respond
to more than twenty curtain-calls. She tried to make a

184 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

little speech of thanks, but failed, broke down and ran
off the stage sobbing, to the huge delight and thunderous
applause of the audience.

Blinded by tears, she was making her way to her
dressing-room when she felt two arms placed about her
from behind and a gentle voice whisper in her ear :

"What, my queen! Are you going without a word
to me?"

The grave reproach made her lift her head and turn.
It was Victor Hugo. His eyes, too, were wet

"Sarah," he said gravely, "I have but one word to say
to you, and I say it with all my soul: merd!"

Georges Clairin, who was present, sketched the two
as they stood there in each other's arms, mingling their
tears of happiness.

The sketch was published some, days later, under the
title of "The Goddess and the Genius." From that day
dated the "divinity" of Sarah Bernhardt. Her art had
become supreme, a thing to amaze and astound the world.

Sarah Bernhardt's collaboration with Victor Hugo
became frequent from that time forward.

In 1877 Hugo saw her in Hernani and wrote to her:

"MADAME,

"You have been great and charming; you have
touched my heart mine, the old soldier's and, at a
certain moment, while the enchanted and overwhelmed
public applauded you, I wept. This tear, which you
caused to fall, is yours, and I throw myself at your feet!

"VICTOR HUGO."

The Real Sarah Bernhardt iS

Accompanying the note was the "tear" a magnificent,
pear-shaped diamond, suspended from a gold bracelet.

Years later, when Sarah was visiting Alfred Sassoon
in London, she lost the bracelet, and Sassoon, tremen-
dously worried, begged to be permitted to replace it

Sarah sadly shook her head.

"Nothing," she said, "can ever replace for me the tear
of Victor Hugo I"

Every critic in Paris, with the sole exception of
Francisque Sarcey the irrepressible, praised with lavish
phrases her performance as the Queen in Ruy Bias. But
Sarcey was brutal.

"She is a scarecrow with a voice," he wrote. "Cer-
tainly the public is entitled to be informed of the reasons
MM. Duquesnel, Chilly and Hugo had for giving her the
role in which she appears. She is not yet mature, does
not move naturally, and seems to rely exclusively on her
talent for recital."

Sarah went into violent Hysterics when she read the
article. She could not imagine why Sarcey was so ven-
omous. Pierre Berton knew Sarcey intimately, of course,
and tried to intercede for her. He met a rebuff.

"Your protegee has blinded you with her blue eyes,"
Sarcey said. "She is not a great success, and she never
will be one I"

The critic continued his devastating articles, seeming
to find pleasure in tearing down the reputation of the

1 86 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

young actress. He had an undisputedly great following,
and the management of the Odeon Itself commenced to
look askance at this unwelcome publicity.

Sarah was particularly concerned over the effect
Sarcey's diatribes would have with the management of
the Comedie Frangaise, for (secretly) she longed to be
taken back into the fold of the theatre which then, as now,
was the principal playhouse of France.

Sarcey's articles culminated in a vitriolic attack on
Sarah's interpretation of another role (I think it was that
of Mademoiselle Ai'see). Sarah read the attack during
an entr'acte on the third night, and became so ill with
anger that a doctor had to be sent for. She finished
her role that night, but her acting was so bad that even
critics favourable to her commented upon it.

Girardin, the friend of Victor Hugo and the most
famous journalist of his time, came to her on the fol-
lowing day, as she lay in bed exhausted from a sleepless
night, and said to her without preamble :

"Of course, you realise why Sarcey is attacking you? 55

Sarah looked at him in red-eyed surprise.

"No why should I know? 55 she replied. "I have
never met him!"

"Think again! 5 ' urged Girardin. "He says you and
he are old acquaintances I"

Sarah thought, and after a moment she replied: "He
is mistaken; I have never met him. 5 '

"He tells his friends that he met you once at the home

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 187

of Madame de S ," responded Girardin, "and that

you were rude to him there "

Sarah sat up in bed with a bound. 'That that
creature that was Sarcey?" she cried. "Why he was
ignoble! He was criticising Carnille Blanchet, one of
my dearest friends, saying that he was a cow on the
stage, and I "

"What did you say?" prompted Girardin.

"I I forget; but I think I said that I would rather be
a cow on the stage than a pig in a drawing-room I . . .
But I had no idea that he was Sarcey I"

"Well," said Girardin conclusively, "that was he!"

Sarah was pale with dismay. "What shall I do?"
she asked.

"There are only two things you can do," answered
Girardin. "Either you can ignore him, and let him con-
tinue his attacks, in which case you can say good-bye to
your chances of re-entering the Comedie at least for
the present; or you can make friends with the man."

"But how make friends?"

"I have heard that he is susceptible to a pretty
woman!" said Girardin, drily, "and if you meet him, and
explain that you did not know that it was he, that day
at Madame de S 's, perhaps "

Sarah understood.

On the following Sunday Pierre Berton (it was he
who told me the story, many years later) saw Sarcey sit-
ting in a stage-box, dressed In a dandified full-dress and
wearing all his honours. His expression was so tri-

i88 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

umphant, as Sarah came on the stage, that Berton "smelt
a rat" and decided to watch carefully.

For some months Sarah's attitude to him had been one
of increasing coldness coldness that was the more in-
explicable, since he had been her friend and protector
from the time she entered the theatre. He believed now
that he held the key to the mystery.

Sure enough, when the curtain fell for the evening,
Sarah accosted Pierre in the wings, and said to him :

"Ecoutesl" I don't feel well to-night; I will go home
alone with Blanche." Blanche was her maid.

His protests only made her refusal to allow him to
escort her the more emphatic and irritable.

"I tell you I am ill I I must go straight home to bed 1"
she asserted.

Hurrying through his dressing, Pierre ran to the stage
entrance, where he hid in the door-keeper's box and
watched. He haid waited some time when word was
brought to him that Sarah had left by the front door.
Hurrying round to the front, Pierre was just in time to see
her greet Sarcey, who was waiting there, with an affec-
tionate kiss, and then mount into the same fiacre with hin.

They drove away together, and from that day on
Sarcey's pen ceased to be dipped in vitriol and became
impregnated with sugar, in so far as Sarah Bernhardt
was concerned. Things continued thus until the in-
evitable break came, when Sarcey resumed his role of
merciles.s critic. But by that time Sarah did not care.
She was back at the Comedie Frangaise, and not all the

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 189

Sarceys in the world could have detracted from her glory
nor torn the halo from her brow.

When Sarah quarrelled with Sarcey, she was greater
than he.

Afterwards she attempted from time to time to renew
her intimacy with Pierre Berton, but Berton, though re-
maining her friend and admirer, scrupulously kept on
that footing and declined to return to his old status of
doting lover and slave.

It was his last love affair until, the mother of his five
children dying, he met and married me.

CHAPTER XV

SARAH communicated to Francisque Sarcey her desire to
return to the Comedie Francaise. Not that she was
unhappy at the Odeon 1 On the contrary, she had been
gloriously happy there and owed everything to the staff
of that theatre. It was simply that in those days, unless
one had become the great star of the Comedie Frangaise,
one was not the great star of France. It was the criterion
by which a dramatic career succeeded or failed a sort
of Royal Academy of the stage. And Sarah's engage-
ment at the Comedie as a star would be a double triumph,
since it would mean that those who disliked her and were
embittered against her by personal quarrels had been
forced to engage her because her genius would not let
them do otherwise.

It was not an unheard-of thing for an actress to be
taken from another theatre to the Comedie and starred ;
but it was rare. Generally, the stars of the Comedie
were societaires actresses who had entered the institu-
tion as apprentices, and had remained there throughout
their careers. It is so even now. For an actress to be
invited from another theatre meant a signal honour and
a public acknowledgment that she was pre-eminent in her
art.

It is likely that Sarcey did not have to use much per-

190

The Real Sarah Bernhardt

suasion with the directors of the Comedie. His influence
was unlimited there, and the mere fact that the great
Sarcey had changed his opinion of Sarah even though
a majority of Paris suspected the cause was enough to
stamp her with the precious hall-mark of genius.

But Sarah had enemies enough in the House of
Moliere. Maubant the tragedian, for one, had sworn
that she should enter the theatre only over his dead
body I Madame Nathalie was still there, together with
her group of powerful friends. She had not forgotten
the time that Sarah had slapped her face, nor would she
ever forget it. The mere rumour that Sarah was to be
invited back to the Comedie would send this group into
transports of rage.

After Le Passant, Sarah's salary at the Odeon had
been increased to four hundred francs a month, and
following her triumph in Ruy Bias she was given a further
increase of two hundred francs, making six hundred in all.

This salary, about six pounds a week, was considered
excellent in those days and it was not bad, even con-
sidering the somewhat depreciated buying-power of
money in Paris due to the war and the Commune.

But it was not nearly sufficient for Sarah, who lived in
lavish style in her new apartment in the Boulevard
Malesherbes. There she had a suite of nine large rooms,
all of them exquisitely furnished, and she maintained a
staff of five servants. She had two coaches one for
ordinary driving to and from the theatre, and the other
for special occasions, such as Sunday mornings in the

192 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Champs Elysees and the Bois, when all fashionable Paris
turned out in their smartest equipages to stare and be
stared at.

She was constantly buying things and as constantly
signing LO.U.'s and traites (a species .of acknowledg-
ment of debt which authorises its collecticfby a bank).
She never knew to a certainty how much money she owed,
and was constantly surrounded by a horde of creditors
eager to cc'lect.

Among these creditors was a Jew, one Frangois
Cohen, a dealer in furniture and one of the most astute
business men in Paris. He was not only a good business
man; he was an extraordinary judge of dramatic talent,
and in fact edited a column of dramatic comment for
Le Monde et La Fille, a monthly sheet distinguished
for its accurate information. He did this, of course,
merely as a recreation.

Sarah's attention was first attracted to him by the
number of Le Monde et La Fille issued after her first
performance in Frangois Coppee's Le Passant the
charity performance, I mean, before the play became a
definite part of the Odeon repertoire. In his column
Cohen had written:

"It is worth while to report the discovery, on Sunday
night, of a new celestial body in the firmament of drama.
We have found a poet, you will say ; yes, but that is the
least of it. Coppee is a master a master in swaddling
clothes but even he, with his intricate verse, of which

(Photo, Henri Manuel)

Sarah Bernhardt in Hamlet.
From the well-known painting by Louis Besnard.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 193

one understands only the beauty without comprehending
the sense, would have been lost but for the outstanding
magnificence of the most promising young actress on
the stage in Paris. I am speaking of Mile. Bernhardt

"Who is she? I have asked, and nobody seems to
know. There are stories of royal favour, of noble blood,
of powerful protection ; let us trust that they are untrue,
for Mile. Bernhardt must have the incentive to work
which only the necessity to live can give her. But that
she is something new in the heavens is, as I have said,
undoubted.

"The question only remains : Will she be a comet, like
so many others, flashing for but a brief instant in our
bewildered and astonished consciousness, or will she de-
velop into a new astronomical marvel, a brilliant seventh
of the Odeon Constellation, destined to shine with in-
creasing brilliance, to dazzle us with her art and to warm
us with her voice, until she becomes a fixed sun in the
celestial firmament of France?

"No one who saw her performance last night can
doubt that the genius is there; it remains but to know
whether she also possesses the great gift of ambition and
the necessary determination to work which alone can
make her success a permanent thing. It is, perhaps,
fortunate that she is not too beautiful. ..."

It was the most keenly analytical criticism that had
appeared -J have quoted only a small part of the article
and, despite Sarah's distaste for the last sentence, she

194 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

realised that the author of the commentary knew what he
was talking about. This was shown by his skilful deline-
ation of the play. She carried the paper to Berton and
asked :

"Who is T. C.' who signs this article?"

"I don't know," said Berton, "and nobody else does
either. It seems to be a sort of secret. But he is
clever."

Sarah sent a note to the paper asking the editor to
communicate with "F. C." and ask him if he would call
upon Sarah Bernhardt, who wished to thank him. She
named a day and a time.

At the appointed hour a call-boy came to her dressing-
room with a card, on which was printed: "Francois
Cohen."

Ah I So this was "F. C." Sarah's eyes brightened
in anticipation. She knew of a question that she meant to
ask him.

The door opened and a little, round-shouldered man,
with a hooked nose and beady, sparkling eyes came in.
He was dressed in a suit of clothes two sizes too big for
him; one of his shoes was unlaced and he kept his hat on.

Without preamble he advanced into the room with a
short mincing gait, trotted over to where Sarah sat re-
garding him with astonishment and suspicion, seized her
hand, which he pecked at with his lips, and then thrust a
large book on the table in front of her and began to
turn over the pages.

"I understand that you are very busy, mademoiselle,"

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 195

he said, with a strong accent, "and so I have brought the
catalogue that is likely to interest you, and I think we can
agree very quickly. The prices are marked, but per-
haps "

Finally Sarah Bernhardt found her voice.

"Who," she demanded, struggling with mingled sur-
prise and indignation, "are you?"

The little Jew looked up, astonished.

"Why," he answered, "I am Francois Cohen! Did
not they give you my card? I was told to come up "

"B but, I thought that you had come from a
paper "

Cohen's little eyes sparkled. "I am Frangois Cohen,
and I sell very fine furniture," he said.

"I do not want to buy furniture!" exclaimed Sarah
testily. "I wanted to see a man who signs himself
T. C.* in Le Monde et La Ville i and I thought, when I
saw your card "

"You are sure you do not want to buy any furniture?"

"Of course I am sure 1"

"Then, mademoiselle, we may talk of the other matter.
I I am also T. C. 1 "

Sarah regarded~him incredulously.

"You are T. C' who writes the theatrical articles in
Le Monde et La Ville?" she demanded, with frank dis-
belief. "I don't believe it! You are trying to lie to
me, so that I will buy your furniture."

"I will prove it to you, if you like."

"How?"

196 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

"Well, you know what I said in my article that you
would one day be a great star if only you worked hard and
had ambition?"

"Yes."

"Have you ambition?" he asked her.

"Yes," returned the actress, wonderingly- "I have
ambition."

"Will you give me your promise to study and work
hard?" the extraordinary little man then asked her.

"I mean to do that yes!" replied Sarah.

"Then I will prove my faith in you by making this
agreement: If you will buy from me the furniture that
you need in furnishing your new flat" (her old one had
been burned out a few nights before), "I will give you
credit for six years!"

Sarah could not believe her ears.

"Credit for six years!" she cried. "But that is a
long time !"

"Six years I" repeated the Jew impassively.

"But why six? Why not ten or two?"

"Because I believe that you will be famous within six
years and will be well able to pay me," he answered.

The deal was struck. Six years later Sarah Bern-
hardt's name was the most celebrated in all Paris, and
Cohen came to collect his bill eleven thousand francs,
including interest. It took all Sarah's spare cash, and
all she could borrow on her salary, but she paid him.
It was the only debt I ever knew her to be scrupulous
about.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 197

Sarah was in bed one .morning when Madai^
Guerard, who had become a sort of secretary to her,
entered the bedroom with a letter in her hand and a
mysterious look on her face. Closing the door behind
her, she went silently to the bed, and stood looking at
Sarah.

Then she handed her the letter. It was fn a large,
square envelope, and on the back .of it was printed
"Comedie Frangaise."

Sarah uttered a cry of exultation. It was her sum-
mons ! She felt morally certain of it before the envelope
was opened.

"Open it, Madame Guerard!" she cried, "and tell me
what it says!"

The old lady carefully broke the seal, withdrew the
letter, adjusted her spectacles and commenced to read:

"Monsieur Perrin, administrator of the Comedie
Frangaise, requests from Mile. Sarah Bernhardt the
honour of an appointment as soon as possible."

Sarah jumped out of bed, seized the letter, and did a
dance of triumph on the floor. "Tell him," she said
breathlessly, "that I will go to see him to-day, at
once "

"It is Monday, and the offices are closed," reminded
Madame Guerard.

"That is so. I had forgotten. Well, tell him I will
go to see him to-morrow afternoon."

198 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

The next day she saw Perrin, who took her hands In
his and said to her earnestly: "My child, I know that
you are very much attached to the Odeon, but your future
belongs to France and this is the National Theatre of
France."

"When Perrin said that," Sarah related to me long
afterwards, "I felt that my great moment had come. I
was vindicated! My art had triumphed! I had com-
pelled the Comedie Frangaise, my enemies, to admit that
I was the greatest artiste in Paris I"

She dictated harsh terms to Perrin, who promised to
consider them. In two days came his reply: the admin-
istration had met and considered her case, and had in-
structed him to say that they would pay her an annual
traitement of 12,000 francs.

With this letter in her hand she sought Duquesnel.
That admirable man had long suspected that Sarah was
eager to return to the Comedie.

But he only looked at her reproachfully and said: "Our
little Sarah wishes to leave us? After all we have done
for her? She does not love us any more !"

Sarah burst into a flood of tears, and flung herself into
the director's arms.

"It is not true! I do not want to leave you! I love
you all! I would like to stay. But you see "

She could not explain that she felt her glory incomplete
as long as she remained only the star of the Odeon.

"Well?" prompted Duquesnel. "Let me say it for
you it is the money!"

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 199

Sarah gave a sigh of relief. She had been afraid he
would divine her real reason. And, anyway, the money
played no small part in her determination to return to
the Comedie.

"Yes," she admitted, "of course, it is the money.
Perrin offers me twelve thousand francs a year. Give
me fifteen thousand and I will remain here."

The largest salary hitherto paid by the Odeon to an
artist was the 10,000 francs a year which had been earned
by Mounet-Sulley before he, too, was taken by the
Comedie Frangaise. Sarah and Duquesnel both knew
that it was impossible that she should be given fifteen.

"I will talk to Chilly," said he at last, ( *but I do not
think he will agree."

The next day Chilly sent for her. His manner was
abrupt, rude. But Sarah understood the man by this
time. She knew that his brusque manner was only his
way of concealing emotion.

"So," he said, "you want to ^ eave us idiot I"

"I do not want to leave," answered Sarah, "but I am
offered more money!"

"Your place is here 1 There is not a theatre in Paris
which can offer you more than the Odeon, except the
Comedie, and of course you will never "

Sarah tendered him the envelope she had received from
Perrin, and Chilly started as he saw the inscription
on the back.

"Ah!" he exclaimed.

Sarah waited.

200 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

"What do they offer?"

"Twelve thousand."

"I will give you twelve "

"No, you must give me fifteen."

Chilly rose from his chair, red with anger. "So,
mademoiselle, that is the way you treat your friends I
Fifteen thousand francs! It is ridiculous absurd.
. . . Do you then take me for an imbecile?"

His attitude enraged Sarah.

"Yes," she snapped, "I take you for just that an
imbecile 1"

And she left the room, banging the door, leaving Chilly
wearily staring after her.

Half an hour later she was back in his office. Advanc-
ing, she held out her arms to Chilly and embraced him.

"So," he exclaimed joyfully. "You will stay?"

"No," returned Sarah. "I am going! But I want
to to thank you. ..." And she burst into tears again.

Sarah signed her contract with the Comedie Frangaise
the same day. A week later Victor Hugo gave a banquet
to celebrate the one hundredth performance of Ruy Bias.

It was in many ways a notable dinner. Not only did
it commemorate the triumph of his greatest play, but it
was Sarah's farewell to the company at the Odeon, her
adieu to the stage on which she had achieved renown.

And it was the last supper of Chilly, the director who
had helped to mould her fame. He died of heart fail-
ure at the table, at the very moment when he was about
to reply to the toast of his health.

CHAPTER XVI

THE death of Chilly momentarily saddened Sarah Bern-
hardt, but did not check her rapid advance to fame. That
event indeed once again brought her abruptly face to face
with the elemental facts of life; and, like other experi-
ences of the same nature, had a profound effect on her
character, while it served as welding material for the art
she displayed in her theatrical interpretations.

Her nature was that of the true artist highly sensi-
tive; once an impression was made on her it remained
for ever as a component part of the edifice of her talent.
Just as a portrait painter, away from his oils, will ob-
serve and remember in its minutest detail some tantalis-
ing cast of expression in the face of his model and will
later reproduce it on canvas, so Sarah's brain was con-
stantly receiving impressions which she later translated
into life, through the medium of the characters she por-
trayed.

Sarah often told me of the fatal dinner during the

of which the little director Chilly died.
I shall never forget a detail of that night, as long as
I live," she said. "It was so incredibly a masterpiece
of the great dramatist, Fate." (She frequently spoke
in a figurative sense.) "It all happened as though writ-

202 The Real Sarah Bernhardt'

ten, rehearsed and stage-managed for weeks, with every
person there an actor word-perfect.

"We were received at the entrance to the restaurant
by Victor Hugo himself. ' It was summer and extremely
hot. Duquesnel, Chilly, Berton and I arrived all to-
gether in my carriage. Throughout the journey from
my flat, Berton and Chilly had been heaping reproaches
on me for my decision to leave the Odeon.

"Chilly was hurt and puzzled. He could not under-
stand why a difference of only three thousand francs a
year should make me leave the theatre which had been
the birthplace of my celebrity. Berton was loudly queru-
lous ; he insisted on reminding me that it was he who had
procured me my first engagement at the Odeon, and once
came right out with the statement that it was Sarcey who
was at the back of my desire to leave the theatre.

"This latter statement, which was quite untrue and
which Berton must have known to have been untrue, an-
gered me to such an extent that I stopped the carriage.

" 'Monsieur,' I said to Berton, 'either you will retract
what you have just said, or you will get out of this car-
riage r

" 'Well, then, why are you leaving us? 1 demanded Ber-
ton sulkily. The man was incorrigible. I laughed at
him.

" 'If you insist upon knowing why I am leaving the
Odeon, Pierre,' I answered him, 'it is because I can no
longer remain at the same theatre with you I 1

"Chilly looked at me strangely, but said nothing. I

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 203

know he was aware the whole theatre was in possession
of the main facts by this time that I had broken with
Berton, and I think he may have imagined there was some
truth in the explanation I had jestingly given. At any
rate, he ceased his complaints and said afterwards not
a single word of protest at my leaving.

"I remember that, during the drive to the restaurant,
Chilly frequently complained of the heat. He had been
working hard all day, and we had, in fact, called at the
theatre, and brought him directly from it in his working-
clothes. He was the most indefatigable worker I have
ever met.

" 'Ah,' said Victor Hugo, on perceiving me, 'here is
Her Majesty the Queen!' He seized my hand, kissed
it twice and then, drawing me to him, kissed me on both
cheeks. It was a characteristic salutation.

" C I see that she is no longer the Queen, but has become

again the artiste of Victor Hugo !' exclaimed Duquesnel.

"Hugo shook his head violently. 'No, 5 he cried, 'she

is more than an artiste, more than a Queen she is a

woman !'

4 'We dined at a long table more than sixty persons,
including practically the whole Ruy Bias company. My
chair had been placed at one end, but I had no sooner
sat down than Hugo began looking round and. running
his hand through his hair in the nervous fashion I re-
member so well. When he saw me, he cried out: 'Ah,
no ! My dinner will be spoiled P Then he added, speak-
ing to Essler who was seated immediately opposite him:

204 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Jane, you are older than Sarah ; take the seat of honour
at the end, and tell her Majesty to come here I'

"Jane did as he requested, but with excusably bad
grace. Before I had come to the Odeon, she had been
its bright, particular star.

"The order was given to open all the doors and win-
dows, and everyone was provided with fans, but the
heat was stifling. Nobody could eat anything. Duques-
nel sat next to me on one side, and Theophile Gautier,
the poet, on the other. Immediately opposite to me was
Victor Hugo. On his right was Chilly, and on his left
Madame Lambquin, who played the part of the Camerera
Major, and who was the doyenne of the Odeon.

"I remember that I did not touch the first course at
all it was a species of hors-d'auvres made from beet-
root, a vegetable which I then detested. Paul de St.
Victor, who sat next to Madame Lambquin, apparently
adored the vegetable and ate so much that the juice ran
down his cheeks. For a poet, he was the fattest and
most repulsive being I have ever known, I hated him,
and he knew it

"I managed to eat a little of the fish, which came next,
but the horrible manners of St. Victor had completely
spoiled my appetite. As I very seldom ate meat I at-
tribute my long life partly to the fact that I have rarely
departed from vegetarianism I got very little to eat
.that night

"When the vegetable course was over, Duquesnel rose
to his feet and, in a few words, proposed our host, Vic-

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 205

tor Hugo's, health. Hugo then replied in a long ad-
dress, full of sentiment and expression, in which he was
good enough to refer to me as the 'animatrice' of the
play.

" 'I,' he declared, 'have only written the piece, but she
has lived itl' Then, turning to me and bowing, he said:
'Mademoiselle, you have a voice of gold P

"When I rose to my feet and started to reply, Paul de
St. Victor, who had been awaiting an opportunity to vent
his spite, brought down his glass so violently that it was
broken. I handed him mine.

" 'Use this, monsieur,' I said to him. 'You would not
look natural without a glass in your hand.'

"The table laughed, and I was given courage to con-
tinue. I was in the middle of a little eulogy of my co-
workers in the piece, when my gaze suddenly fell on the
face of Chilly, and I stopped short.

"The little director's face was ashen, where a moment
before it had been red and perspiring. His eyes were
wide open and staring at me, with a glassy look about
them that frightened me.

" 'Chilly 1 Mon ami/' I cried.

"His eyes met mine without a shade of expression,
though his mouth opened and shut, as if he was trying
to speak.

" 'Chilly !' I cried, terror-stricken, and all at the
table rose to their feet. I rushed to his side and, kneel-
ing, put my arms about him as he sat in his chair. 'Tell
me, what is the matter?' I asked.

206 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

" 'Somebody is holding me I* he muttered, in a thick
voice. ( I cannot move !'

" 'It is the heat; he has had a little stroke; it is noth-
ing!' said Victor Hugo, with authority.

"Chilly was carried into one of the small dining-rooms,
and laid on a couch. Victor Hugo and Duquesnel stood
at the door, as guards, to keep the curious away. To
everyone they declared that it was nothing and that Chilly
would be all right in a few moments.

"I returned to the table and sat down. In my heart I
realised that Chilly would not be all right that it was
the end. And I thought of all the times that this little
man had befriended me, reviewed in my mind the occa-
sions yes, even on that very day when I had been
thoughtless and even brutal with him. Ah, I was sorry !
If I could but have obtained his forgiveness. . . .

"No sooner had this idea come into my head than I
rushed away to put it into execution. I would fall on my
knees beside my friend and teacher, and beg his forgive-
ness. . . .

"At the door I was met by Victor Hugo. One look at
his face and I knew that I was too late.

"Raising his voice, Hugo announced to the room:
'Monsieur Chilly has been taken to his home; we hope
that he will recover to-morrow.' He could not tell them
the truth, as they sat there at his table. Then, to me,
in reply to my mute and terrified inquiry, he said, in a
low voice: 'He has gone. . . A beautiful death!'

"Those who did not know the truth remained to finish

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 207

dinner. Duquesnel took me home. I cried all night.
And the next day a lawyer came to me and told me that
almost the last act of Chilly he had threatened it, but
I had never believed that he would keep his word had
been to begin an action against me for breach of con-
tract. I lost the case, and was sentenced to pay ten thou-
sand francs damages, but this was paid by the Comedie,
as provided in my contract."

The death of Chilly was not the strangest event of
that fatal dinner. Madame Lambquin became suddenly
ill. She told everyone that a fortune-teller, only a few
days previously, had prophesied she would die within a
week of the death of "a little dark man." Chilly was
small and dark, and precisely seven days after his death,
Madame Lambquin died.

Victor Hugo, when he heard of this latest tragedy,
exclaimed :

"Without a doubt Death himself was at my dinner. I
think he aimed at me, but he must be short-sighted, for
one of his arrows went to my right, and slew Chilly, and
the other swerved to my left, and killed Lambquin!"

A few days later Sarah received a note from Sarcey,
asking her to be present at a conference in the directors'
office at the Comedie, to decide which was to be her first
role. Sarah wished to play the part of Britanicus as her
debut } and naturally, as Sarcey's note spoke of a "con-
ference," she anticipated that her wishes were to be de-
ferred to.

On the wav to the theatre she confided her desire to

208 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

play Britanicus to Sarcey, who said nothing. Judge of
Sarah's surprise, therefore, when Sarcey opened the * 'con-
ference" by announcing abruptly: "Mile. Bernhardt be-
lieves that she would prefer to make her debut in Made-
moiselle de Belle Isle."

Sarah was so astounded she could scarcely speak, and
before she could make an adequate protest she was out-
side the door of Perrin's office, with the play a chose
jugee. Then she turned upon Sarcey furiously.

"Why did you do that?" she asked.

"I wish you to play this part! You can have your
Britanicus afterwards, if you like I"

Sarcey spoke carelessly, and his manner was an indi-
cation of the influence he exerted at the Comedie. Sarah
was wise enough not to dispute his decision, but she was
nevertheless angry with him, and refused to see or write
to him for several days.

Her anger was increased when she found that her role
in Mademoiselle de Belle Isle was not in reality the most
prominent part in the play. Two other famous actresses,
public favourites of the Comedie, were in the cast
Sophie Croizette and Madeleine Brohan. The latter, by
her own request, retired from the play during rehearsals.
Sophie Croizette was Sarah's great rival for popular
favour. She had held the first female role at the Fran-
gaise for several years since before the war, in fact.

Sarah decided that she would play the name part,
Mademoiselle de Belle Isle, so extravagantly well that
none of the audience would spare a second thought for

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 209

Croizette, in her part of the Marquise de Prie, who in
the play is kissed in the dark by the Due de Richelieu, m
mistake for the lady from Belle Isle. At rehearsals Sarah
was magnificent. Croizette, who was an intimate friend,
despite their rivalry, used to come to her in despair.

"You are splendid but you give no opportunity to the
rest of us!"

The play was produced on November 6, 1872, and the
first act was a triumph for Sarah. There was indeed
every indication that new glory was about to descend on
the immortal queen of Ruy Bias when, at the beginning
of the second act, she caught sight of her mother in a
stage-box.

Julie was leaning back in a chair, her eyes closed, and
beads of perspiration on her forehead. Sarah knew im-
mediately what had happened. Her mother suffered from
a weak heart, and several times before had had a similar
seizure.

The tragic death of Chilly, which she had all but wit-
nessed, was fresh in Sarah's mind, and doctors had told
her years before that she must expect her mother's disease
to end fatally one day. She watched the stage-box in
agonised fashion, while the audience became bewildered
at the extraordinary change which had come over their
star.

Sarah stumbled through the rest of the play, and im-
mediately afterwards, learning that Julie had been car-
ried there from the theatre, hurried to her mother's home.

Meanwhile the danger had passed. When Sarah ar-

2io The Real Sarah Bernhardt

rived, she found her mother pale, but otherwise recov-
ered, and taking nourishment.

Returning to her own flat she found a note from
Sarcey:

"It was ludicrous. Shall I ever understand you? The
first act was wonderful; in the others you spoilt the play 1"

Furious that he should not have seen the reason for
her agitation, Sarah refused to make any excuse for her-
self or to give him the slightest explanation. So, when
his criticism of the play appeared in Le Temps, five days
later, he was evidently in two minds as to whether to
praise or condemn. His hesitation shows itself in several
passages.

At the beginning of his critique he said:

"It must be admitted that, independently of her per-
sonal merit, there have formed around the person of
Sarah Bernhardt a number of true or false legends, which
excite the curiosity of the public. But it was a disap-
pointment when she appeared. Her costume exaggerated
her slenderness, and her face had been whitened too much
with powder. The impression was not agreeable."

This was because he had urged her to modify her
costume and she had not done so. Further on, Sarcey
wrote that she "trembled convulsively" during the play,
and while admitting that she had "marvellous grace,"

The Real Sarah Bernhardt

still insisted that she "was lost in the strong passages."
But he added, "were she to possess a vibrant dramatic
quality equal to her enchanting voice, she would be a per-
fect actress, an actress unequalled at the present day."
This, when his previous articles are remembered, was
quite an admission, and he ended his article with a real
eulogy :

"At the close of the play the artiste apparently found
herself, and for a brief space we could recognise in her
Our Sarah the Sarah of twenty successes."

By the way, he had not admitted one of those suc-
cesses himself !

It was only after the publication of his critique which
in the circumstances Sarah recognised as just that he
discovered the real reason for her poor performance.
He then had the grace not only to apologise personally,
but to publish an account of what had happened in a
later issue of Le Temps.

His apology, however, could not alter the fact that
the public thought her explanation only an artiste's ex-
cuse, and the honours of the play went definitely to Sophie
Croizette, who was really one of the most accomplished
artistes who have ever adorned the French stage.

For the next ten years there was a terrific rivalry be-
tween these two not only in Paris, but abroad.

If Sarah created a role one week, Sophie created one
the next, and critics were divided in their opinion as to

212 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

which was the greater actress. If Sarah went on tour,
so did Sophie; and the duel between these two close
friends kept Paris perpetually entertained.

It was generally agreed, finally, that Sarah was the
greater actress, but that she was also the more eccentric,
the more apt to lose her head; nor, it was said, did she
have the innate technique that distinguished Croizette's
performances.

Croizette had few enemies and perhaps that is why
she has been forgotten, or nearly so, by the public. Sarah,
on the contrary, used to say that she counted a day lost
wherein she had not made "either a true enemy or a
supposedly true friend*"

CHAPTER XVII

EPISODE now succeeded episode in the life of the young
actress for she was still not more than twenty-eight
years old.

She quarelled with Francisque Sarcey, and fell in love
with an old friend of the Odeon Mounet-Sully, the
handsomest actor on the French stage, who, like Sarah,
had been taken from the Odeon by the management of
the Theatre Fran?ais.

She acquired her famous coffin, which never afterwards
left her, and in which her remains now lie at Pere
Lachaise.

She was sued right and left for debt.

Her sister Regine died.

Her own health became precarious, and a physical ex-
amination showed a spot on her right lung.

Most of these events occurred within the first three
years of her re-engagement at the Comedie Frangaise.
Her eight years at this theatre were among the most
eventful of her life.

During them* ''she became the darling of one part of
Paris, and the scorn of another part. During them she
was credited with having had "affairs" with no less than
nine prominent men. During them her fame spread
throughout the world.

213

214 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Her quarrel with Sarcey dated from the moment she
felt herself strong enough to stand without his aid. I
shall never believe that her liaison with Sarcey was actu-
ated by anything except the motives of professional ex-
pediency. In fact, she practically admitted this to me.

"Sarcey," she said, "was one of those highly-gifted but
intolerant men whose one aim in life is to mould the
opinions of their friends and intimates to suit them-
selves. He was a brilliant writer, a still more brilliant
conversationalist, and there is no doubt that, as a theatri-
cal critic, he was head a^d shoulders above any other then
living in France.

"His judgment was deferred to by most of the theat-
rical managers, and especially by those at the Comedie,
whose political views and connections were the same as
those of Sarcey himself. It was said that Sarcey could
procure the admission or the resignation of anybody at
the Comedie. He was extremely opinionated and very
hard to change once he had made up his mind. He
hardly ever forgot a slight, and never an insult

"He was unquestionably an enemy of mine from the
beginning, and I made him my friend when 1 - it became
necessary to do so, but not because I was in any doubt
as to his character. I found that, like many geniuses, he
was insupportable in private life. He would rave and
tear his hair twice or three times a day over matters with-
out the slightest consequence. He usurped the privilege
of 'protecting' me, and as a consequence a wrong inter-
pretation was put on our friendship by the theatrical

The Real Sarah Earnhardt

world, to which the word 'protector' meant only one
thing lover.

"People were bound to comment on the fact when a
prominent man like Sarcey came night after night to the
theatre and insisted on seeing me home. Why, he used
to speak of me to his friends as his protegee. What
actually happened was that my art and my determination
to succeed triumphed over his enmity, and, finding that
he could not hamper my career, he did his best to make
people think he was responsible for it.

"He was subject to fits of extj erne jealousy, and would
carry on for hours if I so much as accepted another man's
invitation to dinner. He acted as though he owned me,
and when things got to this pass I decided to demonstrate
to him that he did not"

She accomplished this very effectually by yielding to
the supplications of Mounet-Sully.

When Sarah re-entered the Cornedie Frangaise,
Mounet-Sully was the reigning power there. His fame
was widespread ; he was probably not only the finest but
also the handsomest actor on the European stage.

Of Mounet-Sully it was written : "He is as handsome
as a god, like a hero of Greek tragedy," and it was of
these tragedies that he was incomparably the greatest
interpreter of his epoch.

There is reason to believe that Sarah's affair with
Sully was secret for many months during which she and
Sarcey, who suspected nothing at the time, remained
friends.

216 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Later, however, he began to hear gossip linking their
names, and once he overheard Sarah address Mounet-
Sully by the familiar "m." This may or may not have
been significant, for artists of the French stage generally
use the second person singular in talking among them-
selves.

Mounet-Sully also was young, and of a jealous tem-
perament. There came a day when he could no longer
bear the covert sneers of the critic. Coming down from
his dressing-room after a rehearsal, he found Sarcey
striding backwards and forwards on the stage.

"What are you doing here?" he shouted. "Do not
deny it you are waiting for Sarah!"

"What if I am?" demanded Sarcey imperturbably.
"Who has a better right?"

"Pig! Son of a pig!" cried the enraged young actor,
losing all self-control at the cool cynicism of the critic.
"I challenge you to a duel !"

"I do not fight with children!" replied Sarcey, and spat
on the floor to signify his contempt.

Sarah had been standing in the wings, and had over-
heard the dispute. She now came forward.

"Francisque, take me to supper!" she said, darting an
angry look at Mounet-Sully. She could never bear these
open quarrels between her admirers.

The actor did not speak to her for a month, but they
composed their differences later and remained lovers for
almost a year, only to separate again as the result of
another fit of jealousy on Mounet-Sully' s part.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 217

For a short while they were again enemies, and then,
once more deciding to make it up, remained friends
throughout the remainder of Mounet-Sully's long career.
When he married his grand-daughter recently obtained
a premier prix at the Paris Conservatoire Sarah was
present at the wedding, and sent the young couple a
magnificent gift.

In 1874 Sarah was taken ill, as the result of a cold,
which developed into pleurisy. She was in bed for a
month, and at the end of this period an examination by
three doctors revealed that one of her lungs was slightly
affected. She was adviseH to leave the theatre, and to
go to Switzerland for six months.

"How long do you give me to live? 1 ' she asked one
of the physicians.

"Not longer than five years, if you do not take a com-
plete rest until you are cured," he replied.

"Five years! But that is a lifetime 1" she answered.
"When I was seventeen the doctors gave me only three
years, and I have lived thirteen. I shall continue acting
until I die! 11

And, despite all remonstrances from her friends, she
returned to the theatre as soon as she was able to leave
her bed. To the doctors' astonishment also, ten months
later the spot on her lung completely disappeared. Per-
haps it had never existed 1

About this time she was asked by an admirer what he
could send her as a souvenir.

2i 8 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

"They say I am to die," said Sarah, gaily, "so you may
send me a coffin!"

The admirer took her at her word, and a week later
she received a letter from a famous firm of coffin makers,
stating that an order had been received for a coffin for
mademoiselle, which was to be constructed according to
her own wishes.

Sarah was most particular in regard to this coffin.
She made several designs, only to discard them one after
the other. Finally she agreed that it should be con-
structed of fine-grained rosewood, and that the handles
and "hoops" should be of solid silver. She afterwards
had these changed to gold, but subsequently, during one
of her frequent periods of impecuniosity, she sold the
golden hoops and had them replaced with the silver ones
that were on the coffin when she was buried.

For the remiander of her life this coffin, "le cercuell de
Sarah Bernhardt" never left her, even when she was
travelling. It attained an almost legendary fame. She
had a mahogany trestle made for the coffin, on which it
stood at the end of her great bed, so that she could see
it from her pillow, without an effort, on awakening.

"To remind me that my body will soon be dust and
that my glory alone will live for ever!" she said.

"How long will it last?" she inquired of the makers
when they delivered the coffin.

"For centuries !" replied they.

"It will need to last at least one, for I am determined

Sarah Bernhardt in Le Passant.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 219

to disappoint the doctors and live to be a hundred I" she
answered.

She delighted to be photographed lying, dressed in
different costumes, in Ker coffin. More than fifty differ-
ent photographs and sketches were made of her in this
situation. On occasions, when guests came to her house
for tea, she would serve it to them on the coffin.

Once she held a mock funeral. The rosewood coffin
with its golden ornaments was brought with much pomp
and ceremony into the studio-salon at the rear of her
apartment, and Sarah, dressed in a long white robe and
with a lily in her hand, climbed into it and lay at full-
length as though dead.

WEile I played the "Funeral March" by Chopin on the
piano, the poet Robert de Montesquiou ceremoniously
placed lighted candles around the coffin ; while the other
guests, who included Jeanne Bernhardt, Madame Guerard
and Madame de Winter, kept up a monotonous chant,
reminiscent of the burial service.

She carried the coffin everywhere with her. It was a
sight to see it loaded on top of the ancient carriage in
which she was wont to make her provincial trips. At
hotels in which she stayed, the coffin was invariably taken
into her bedroom before she herself would enter it, and
placed in the accustomed position at the foot of the bed.

On one occasion when we were touring the South of
France, the personnel of a hotel at Nimes struck sooner
than permit the coffin to be brought into the hotel. The
superstitious proprietor was in tears, and swore that the

220 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

funereal object meant unhappiness to his family and bad
luck to his business.

Nothing daunted, Sarah insisted on the coffin being
brought in, and then called together the members of the
troupe.

"You and I," she said to me, "will be the cooks.
"You," indicating Pierre Berton (then my husband),
"will be the waiter."

Other members of the troupe were given their parts
as chamber maids, dishwashers, valets and the like, and
for a whole day we ran that hotel. The next day the
personnel, having been given free tickets to the theatre,
were so impressed by Sarah's personality that they re-
turned to work in a body, and the manager, declaring
that he had never eaten better meals than those prepared
by Sarah and myself, refused to accept a franc in pay-
ment for our rooms and board.

As soon as it was finished, Sarah had the coffin taken
to her flat and placed alongside her Louis XVI bed.
Whenever visitors came to call upon her, she would make
a point of showing them this strange piece of furniture.

Her sister Regine, who was tubercular, had been sent
to Switzerland, but when her disease became complicated
with another malady, all hope was given up, and she
returned to Paris, to her sister's flat.

Sarah had only just moved into this new home and
had only one bedroom, so Regine and she at first shared
the same bed. Regine's condition grew so serious, how-
ever, that the doctors warned Sarah that she could no

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 221

longer sleep with her sister without a serious risk of
contracting the malady.

Accordingly, Sarah made up a bed in the coffin and
slept in that.

When the doctor came he was horrified.

"Take that thing out!" he ordered. "It is not yet
timel"

With some difficulty Sarah convinced him that the
coffin was not meant for her sister,, but was her own bed.
A few days later Regine died. /

The tragedy had its effect on Sarah's life for a year
or more, and she became a devout worker. Her name
gradually ceased to be connected by gossipy writers with
the scandals of the day. But after a year of mourning
she flung ofi her mask of grief and "La Grande Sarah,"
as she was known, again became a reigning queen of
Paris.

She fitted up one of the rooms of her flat as a studio,
and here, when she was not at the theatre or resting, she
worked at painting and sculpture.

Sarah Bernhardt, as Charles de Lagrille said, was not
simply an incomparable artiste; she was the artiste
artiste in. the most complete sense of the word. She
understood and realised in the most perfect fashion the
ideal of Beauty.

Sarah was not only the interpreter of Phedre,

"La fille de Minos et de Pasipha,"

that demi-goddess whom she incarnated so superbly; she
was also the wise genius who discovered and launched

222 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

poets and authors without number Coppee, Mendes,
Richepin, and the two Rostands, father and son. But
her love of beauty was not confined to the theatre alone ;
she was equally at home in all branches of Art ; she was
novelist, dramatist, painter and sculptor.

Sarah Bernhardt published, in 1878, as we shall see,
a book which was greatly appreciated by the literary
critics of the time and which was entitled u ln the Clouds."
Replying to the famous and scurrilous publication "Sarah
Barnum," she wrote in retaliation a work called "Marie
Pigeonnier." She was also the author of her own
"Memoirs," and of two modest works of fiction, one of
which was published only a few years before her death,
as well as several short stories.

Three successes were recorded by Sarah Bernhardt,
the dramatist. They were L'Aveu, produced at the
Odeon in 1888 by such interpreters as Paul Mounet,
Marquet, Raphaele, Sisos and Samary ; Adrienne Lecouv-
reur, a piece in five acts, in which she played the title part
herself, and in which have since played such distinguished
actors as de Max, Gerval, Decoeur and Charlotte Bar-
bier; and Un Casur d'Homme, a three-act play, which
Henry Roussel and Emmy Lyn produced in 1909.

But the theatre is only one sphere of Art. The great
actress was also a great painter. Her pictures, said
critics, lacked the masterly technique that only long expe-
rience and training could have given her, but they were
frank, well-proportioned, and distinguished for their
colour values.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 223

Just after she returned to the Comedie Frangaise, she
painted my portrait, and this picture, needless to say, is
still one of my most prized possessions.

At the Salon of 1878 she showed a remarkable com-
position entitled "Young Girl and Death." This canvas
represented Death clutching at an artiste with a bouquet
of flowers in her hand. It was an indication of the
morbid strain in her character.

In 1872, after her first triumph at the Comedie, the
sculptor Mathieu-Mesnier asked for permission to make
her bust. She consented, watched his work, and asked
innumerable questions. Thereafter, nothing would do
but that she herself must become a sculptress.

Her first attempt in this direction was a medallion bust
of her aunt at Neuilly. This was finished in one night
and when exhibited astonished the critics by its virility
and resemblance to the model. Mathieu-Mesnier con-
tinued to instruct her, and she passed most of her nights
in modelling.

Her next effort was a bust of her young sister, Regine
made a few days before the latter's death. Others of
her best sculptures (many of which were sold at the recent
auction in Paris) were "After the Tempest,'' a group in
marble; busts of Victorien Sardou, Blanche Barretta,
Busnach (the dramatist who prepared Zola for the
theatre), Henry de la Pomoraye, Coquelin, junior; her
son, Maurice; Louise Abbema and Edmond Rostand.
The last was completed after the poet's death, and was
exhibited in the Rostand museum.

CHAPTER XVIII

"LA GRANDE SARAH" had now become an extraordinary
figure in the contemporary life of Paris. There were two
camps, one composed of her friends, the other of her
enemies, and at one time it was difficult to know which
group was the more numerous.

The friends of Sarah were called the "Saradoteurs,"
and cartoons of the great actress surrounded by her court
became commonplaces 1 in the metropolitan press. The
weeklies were full of real or imagined escapades of the
.triumphant artiste of the Comedie Frangaise.

It was said that she bathed in milk; that she had made
the circuit of the Champs Elysees in the snow, with
neither shoes nor stockings on; that she had entered the
cage of a lion at the St. Cloud fete, and subsequently pur-
chased the lion; that she had a regular menagerie chained
up in her flat and that in consequence the neighbours had
complained and that she was to be forced to move ; that
she had been twice seen on the boulevards with the young
Prince Napoleon, who- was supposed to be in exile; that
she was at heart a Bonapartist, and was secretly working
for the restoration of the monarchy; that she had an
enormous appetite for strong drink; that she had ordered
a coach-and-four in gold and ebony that was to cost two
hundred thousand francs ; that she had slapped the face

224

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 225

of Perrin, the director of the Theatre Frangais; that she
was not a woman at all, but a boy masquerading in
woman's clothes (this was doubtless owing to Sarah's
startling success in young male parts) ; that Gambetta
himself had called upon her, and had been received in
the actress's cabinet de toilette, where she happened to
be washing herself; that she had given five hundred
francs to a blind beggar, because she thought he resem-
bled a former lover; that she dressed up as a man and
frequented public balls in disguise, challenging men
friends to duels and then revealing herself to them.

I have no way of verifying any of these tales. From
what I myself knew of Sarah and her way of living, I
expect that parts of them, at any rate, were true.

It was a saying that there were three celebrated hours
in Paris: One o'clock, Gambetta smokes his second cigar;
four o'clock, prices fall at the Bourse; five o'clock, Sarah
receives for tea.

Every afternoon her flat was filled with a motley
assembly of the great and the nearly great. Sarah used
to receive them in her sculptor's clothes, a kind of pyjama
costume, designed by herself and made of silk. She would
stand at the entrance of her workroom, imperious as a
queen receiving homage from her people.

The first thing guests perceived on entering was a
gigantic dog on a short chain, which growled and sprang
at everyone who came in. Many people could not be
persuaded to visit Sarah on account of this dog. My
aunt was one I never got her past the door, where she

226 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

would sit and wait for me patiently, while telling the
growling animal, from a safe distance, what she thought
of him.

This dog was a great friend of mine, and not the
brute which sprang at my throat in the manner related
in a preceding chapter. He never growled at me, though
I was in and out of Sarah's home at all hours of the day.
I used to help her to mix her clay, and several times
posed for an effect that she wanted to get perfect.

A flight of five or six stairs led up to the first reception
room, where champagne cups usually stood on a small
table; and in the hall outside this room a disagreeable
surprise awaited the unwary visitor. This was a full-
sized monkey, which was fastened by one leg to a chair,
but was otherwise free to move about which he did,
with a great chattering and gnashing of teeth.

The little drawing-room had in it two birdcages and
a great tank of goldfish, while cats and small dogs roamed
about in a most casual way. Philippe, an old waiter
whom Sarah had persuaded to leave the Cafe du Foyer
(?) and enter her service, was in perpetual terror of all
these animals and eventually left Sarah's service, after
he had been bitten in the hand by the monkey.

Sarah usually had something new in the way of statu-
ary to show her guests. I remember well when she did
her "Medee," a piece almost as big as she was herself;
and once, when I entered unannounced, I found her start-
ing the bust of the famous Adolphe de Rothschild, for
which he had promised her ten thousand francs.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 227

Sarah had a lot of trouble with this piece of work.
She said it was because the Baron continually changed
his expression. At any rate, when the bust was finally
achieved, all Rothschild's comment, after looking at it,
was to say drily:
"Is that me?"

Then he turned to a writing-table to draw up an order
on Eis bank for the ten thousand francs, only to be
arrested by a crash.

Sarah stood in the centre of the floor panting, her
eyes flashing and her breast heaving. On the floor lay
the bust, smashed to a thousand pieces.

Baron de Rothschild, without a word, turned and left
the room. The next day he received his bust in a thou-
sand pieces "with Sarah Bernhardt's compliments."

The story became common property and Rothschild
never spoke to her again. She remained friends with
others of the same family, however, smd there came a
day when she was grateful for their help.

Sarah fitted up a magnificent studio near the Place de
Clichy, in the avenue now chiefly distinguished for the
number of night establishments which grace or disgrace
it. It was a large, bare place, with immense windows,
several step-ladders, and a divan covered with skins. For
principal adornment it had a single, magnificent, white
bear skin, which was the first present Sarah received from
Georges Clairin, the painter and mural decorator of
whom more anon. He had been her admirer for years

228 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

but it was not until 1879 that she yielded to his persistent
pleadings and became really intimate with him.

The place was littered with scraps of plaster, old
frames, cross-trees, brushes, supports, mallets, chisels and
other paraphernalia of the sculptor and painter.

An old man who had once been an actor of repute, but
who had been reduced to poverty and disgrace by mor-
phine, was employed as a sort of general factotum. He
would be an exemplary servant for a month or so, and
then the drug passion would seize him and he jsvould dis-
appear for a week, during which the studio became lit-
tered with all kinds of refuse, from broken statues
which had been thrown violently to the floor by Sarah in
fits of dissatisfaction, despondency or rage to empty
bottles of champagne and liqueurs, with which she was
wont to entertain her guests.

About this time, if my memory serves me right, oc-
curred the famous duel fought by Richard O'Monroy,
the writer in La Vie Parisienne, and Edouard de Lagre-
nee, a distinguished young diplomat, whose infatuation
for Sarah was like that of so many other men terrific
while it lasted, but of brief duration.

Sarah was in the habit of giving "soirees amusantes"
in her atelier on nights when she was not billed to act
at the Comedie.

These soirees consisted for the most part of conver-
sation, recitals by poetic friends of the actress, gossip,
and sometimes dancing. They were, in the word of Paris,
"tres a la mode"

(Photo, Henri Manuel)

Sarah Bernhardt (aged 30) and her son, Maurice, on the only
occasion when he acted with her.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 229

Sarah's invitations were much sought after, but she
never sent a formal one. It was understood that friends
of hers were always welcome, and welcome also to bring
any friends of their own. Thus Sophie Croizette who,
despite her rivalry with Sarah, had remained a friend out-
side of theatrical hours appeared about nine o'clock one
night, dragging by the hand a pale, anaemic-looking young-
ster, who appeared to be extremely bashful and intensely
desirious of being elsewhere.

"See what I have caught!" cried Sophie, advancing
into the atelier and dragging her young man after her.
But the "catch" suddenly twisted his hand from hers and,
without a word, turned tail and ran away. They rushed
after him, to see his coat tails flying down the street fifty
yards away.

"Who," demanded Sarah, when she had finished laugh-
ing, "was that extraordinary person?"

"That," answered Sophie Croizette, "was a Consul of
France and he is madly in love with you!"

Sarah looked at her, astonished.

"But," she said, "I have never seen him before!"

"He has seen every performance you have given for
nearly six months, since he returned from Rome," ex-
plained Sophie.

"But who is he?" demanded Sarah, enormously in-
trigued, but uncertain whether to be pleased or to be
angry.

"He is a young Republican, a protege of MacMahon,
and was made a consul. His family is a very distin-

230 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

guished one; you will find it in the Liste des Families"
explained Mile. Croizette. "He is also a poet, and has
written some fine verses about you, which he has been
afraid to send. He is the most bashful man in all Paris I"

This was enough to excite the interest of Sarah Bern-
hardt 1

A few nights later she perceived the bashful one in
the back seat of a box near the stage. She smiled at him,
but the poor young man was too timid to smile back.
Sarah determined that, by hook or by crook, she would
get to know him. He had, she decided, a face of singular
beauty.

From inquiries she made here and there among her
friends, she found that he had served in the war, and
that he had an enviable record for bravery. It is thus
with many timid, unassuming men.

De Lagrenee was a man of noble artistic temperament,
very much the idealist and the passionate lover but so
far he had done his passionate loving at a distance.

"Who is the remarkable-looking man with the decora-
tion in that box?" she asked Mounet-Sully, who was
playing with her.

"That is Edouard de Lagrenee," answered Mounet-
Sully. "He is very distinguished in the diplomatic

service."

During the first entfacte, through a hole in the cur-
tain, she pointed out de Lagrenee to a call-boy.
"You see that man?" she said. "Send him to me!"
But her messenger returned without him.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 231

"Monsieur thanks Mile. Sarah Bernhardt for her
courtesy, but begs to state that he is a worshipper on a
lower plane, and would not dare to approach the altar
of his goddess 1" was the quaint reply of the diplomat

Sarah did not know whether to be offended or pleased.
In any case she was immensely interested, and determined
at once to bring about an occasion which de Lagrenee
would be obliged to meet her.

Accordingly she made inquiries and found that he was
in the habit of frequenting the Salon held by Madame
Lobligeois in her house in the Avenue des Champs
Elysees a villa set back in what were then woods
which had become a rendezvous of the intellectual set.
Through her old friend Duquesnel, still director of the
Odeon, she arranged to be invited to one of these exclu-
sive affairs, and that her intention to be present should
be kept a secret.

The afternoon came. De Lagrenee, according to his
custom, was entertaining the company at the house of
Mme. Lobligeois with his views on artistic subjects, when
the door opened without warning and Sarah swept in,
followed by that cohort of faithful, gay young idolators
whom she termed her "performing seals."

As had been arranged beforehand, Duquesnel hastened
forward and, on seeing de Lagrenee, cried:

"Ah, my dear fellow, allow me to present you to Her
Majesty the Queen of Paris!"

There being no avenue of escape, de Lagrenee, who,
although genuinely timid and embarrassed, was none the

The Real Sarah Bernhardt

less a gentleman, found himself pushed forward into the
presence of the woman whom he had, for so long and
from such a distance, adored.

Sarah at once drew him aside and began an animated,
if one-sided, conversation. De Lagrenee was too reticent
or too bashful to say much; but under Sarah's friendly
smile he gradually gained courage, with the result that
when she gave him an invitation to visit her in her dress-
ing-room and afterwards to sup alone with her at her
flat, he stammered his acceptance, overwhelmed with a
mixture of confusion and joy.

From then on the affair followed the customary course.
Sarah made excessive demands on de Lagrenee. She in-
sisted that he should take her everywhere and be seen
with her in public restaurants and in society. From a
distant worshipper, he became her abject slave. People
called him "Sarah's messenger Boy," and "Sarah's little
dog." Never a day passed without a mass of fresh flow-
ers being sent to her dressing-room by the young diplomat.

At length the scandalous rumour that he was Sarah's
latest conquest reached the ears of his aristocratic par-
ents, who belonged to a set which severely disapproved
of the stage and everyone connected with it. Aghast,
they sent for their son and commanded him to sever his
connection with the actress at once.

By nature a dutiful son, he agreed, although not with-
out considerable heart-pangs, as may be imagined. When
Sarah heard about his pledge, however, and the argu-
ments that had exacted it, she went to the house of his

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 233

parents in a fury, insisted on admittance, created a ter-
rible scene, and frightened and astonished them both
beyond measure. Finally when de Lagrenee appeared,
she overwhelmed his halting objections and carried him
off with her in her carriage.

A week later de Lagrenee was directed to join the
French consular staff at St. Petersburg, that being the
city the farthest away from Sarah that his parents could
think of. And the romance was effectually stopped.
Before he left for Russia, however, an incident occurred
which nearly cost de Lagrenee his life.

Richard O'Monroy, besides writing his weekly chron-
icles in La Fie Parisienne, was one of those society
hangers-on who love to boast of their conquests of
women. He used to do this, not only in allegedly witty
conversation, but, in veiled terms, in the salacious weekly
to which he contributed.

He chose this moment to relate using assumed names,
of course, but with descriptions which revealed better
than mere names could have done how, in a quarter of
an hour, he had made the conquest of Sarah Bernhardt 1

Sarah was terribly offended, not so much at the way
the article was written, but at the idea that any man could
dare to claim that he had "conquered" her and in
fifteen minutes at that !

Hurrying to de Lagrenee, she laid the article before
him. The young consular official was furious, and sent
an immediate challenge to O'Monroy, despite the fact
that the chronicler was a notoriously expert swordsman,

234 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

while de Lagrenee was small, physically weak, and no
fencer at all

The duel was arranged according to the code, and was
fixed to take place in the Bois de Boulogne one morning
at five o'clock. Sarah watched it from the closed windows
of her coach* Neither antagonist knew that she was
there, the coach being hidden behind some trees in an
allee usually reserved for riders.

As was to be expected, de Lagrenee was overwhelmed
from the outset, and in less than two minutes he was
severely wounded in the thigh.

Seeing him lying bleeding on the ground, Sarah would
have run to him and covered him with caresses, but she
was prevented by her companions.

During his convalescence, she was barred from the
sick-room and had to content herself with daily letters
and flowers.

As soon as he recovered, he was ordered to his post
at St. Petersburg, and the short-lived romance was over.

Sarah never forgot de Lagrenee, and for several years
she kept up a correspondence with him. His letters
which, according to her custom, she destroyed were full
of tender, poetic messages, pleading love of and faith in
her. A man less fitted to be a diplomat probably never
existed. Sarah always spoke of him to me in terms of
genuine afiection.

CHAPTER XIX

f

NOWADAYS almost anything can be said about a theatrical
star and her manager is glad. He knows that the more
she is written about, the more she is talked about, the
larger will be the receipts of the theatre at which she is
playing. Even the ancient and eminently respectable
Comedie Frangaise has been obliged to accept this point
of view though not without some pangs, I imaging
Witness the celebrated escapade of Mile. Cecile Sorel,
great and exquisite interpreter of Moliere, who two years
ago visited a public gallery and smashed an uncompli-
mentary "portrait" of her by Bib, a young cartoonist.
The press of the world was full of the incident, but, so
far as is known, the actress was not hauled over the coals
by the administration of the Comedie Frangaise.

But in the seventies and eighties a different view was
taken of such matters. An artiste was supposed to be
contented with reviews of the plays she appeared in, and
the Comedie Frangaise especially deplored any effort on
the part of an individual actress to make herself known
by any other method than the excellence of her acting.

Thus it may be imagined that Sarah was rapidly
making enemies for herself. One could not open a news-
paper or a magazine without reading some article de-
voted to her, without seeing an account of some escapade

235

236 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

of hers. Sarah herself has said in her "Memoirs" that
she regretted this publicity, without being able to sup-
press it, and that she never read the newspapers. Per-
hagyshe may be pardoned this slight lapse of memory.

Vlany times I have found her in the morning, her bed
covered with marked copies of publications sent her by
friends, and by writers of paragraphs about her. She
gloried in them. She did not care what people said about
her, so long as they said something. She herself, to my
certain knowledge, inspired many of the most far-fetched
stories.

When she found that the cartoonists had seized upon
her slender figure and fuzzy hair as heaven-sent objects
on which to exercise their talents, she wore clothes that
accentuated her slimness, and her hair became more
studiously unruly than ever. When she found that every
foolish thing she did was immediately commented upon
in a score of newspapers, hostile as well as friendly, she
spent hours thinking out new escapades, and made fool-
ishness an art.

She was the first actress who really understood the
value of publicity.

Genius can be as eccentric as it pleases, but eccentricity
without genius becomes a boomerang, to hurl fools into
oblivion.

Had Sarah been a lesser woman all this publicity would
have ruined her, but she really was a genius, and not only
possessed a talent for self-advertisement, but had a gen-
uine passion for work. People who had read dozens of

Sarah a constant victim to writ-servers.

Exhibited at the Exposition ties Incohrent$>

1880

Sarah and Sarcey.
By Caran d'Ache, 1880.

The Manifold Vocations of Sarah.

By Moloch, in La Silhouette,

1880.

Sarah and Damala in Les

M&m Ewnemes t by Grimm.

1883.

Sarah Bernhardt in Caricature,

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 237

idiotic stories about her would visit the theatre prepared
to scoff 4mt they remained to applaud her frantically.

She was bigger than all the publicity she obtained.
Her art justified all.x6ut her manager, Perrin, and the
committee of the'tTomedie could not see things that way.
They-were horrified and disgusted at the notoriety that
had descended on the venerable House of Moliere, as
the result. of the, follies of their star.

Perrin used to remonstrate violently with her.

"You are a disgrace to the theatre and to your art!"
he said in my hearing on one occasion. "You will ruin
the Comedie with your insanities I"

"I will resign, then!" said Sarah promptly. And^
Perrin immediately became contrite, for Sarah drew more
people to the box-office than any two artists the Comedie
possessed, even including Mounet-Sully and Sophie Croi-
zette.

Louis Giffard was then one of the lions of Paris.
Giffard was a balloonist, and balloon ascensions were the
clou of the 1878 Exhibition. Giffard had long been an
admirer of Sarah's and as he started one of his ascents
he threw a wreath of flowers at her as she stood in a
little group of spectators. For this gentle act of courtesy
she invited him to dine with her.

"Tiens, Sarah!" said Clairin, during this festivity,
"there is something you have not done yet you have not
gone up in a balloon 1"

"She has her head always in the clouds!" grumpily put
in-Alexandre Dumas, junior, who had had many a lively

238 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

passage of arms with his most unruly interpreter. But
Sarah took up the suggestion immediately.

Turning enthusiastically to Giffard, she asked: "It is
true? Can you take me up in your balloon?"

"It would be the crowning point of my career I" re-
sponded Giffard gallantly.

"When can we go?" asked Sarah, all excitement.

"To-morrow morning, if you wish !"

Sarah seized Georges Clairin by the arm. "And you,
Georges will you come into the clouds with me, too?"

"He would be a poor poet who would not follow an
angel into her natural element!" answered Clairin, kiss-
ing her.

Everyone present was sworn to strict secrecy, and the
next morning, at seven o'clock, we trooped out to the
space just outside the city gates where Giffard's balloon
was in readiness. He had been there since dawn, making
his preparations, and when we arrived everything was
ready.

Sarah, as she started to climb into the balloon, turned
and saw me crying.

"What is the matter, ma petite Therese ?" she asked,
putting her arms around me. I said that I wanted to
go, too.

"There is no room," said Giffard. "You shall make
an ascent with me another time."

"But I want to go with Sarah!" I wailed.

Everyone laughed, and Gustave Dore, the illustrator,
caught me up in his arms. "But, ma cherie" he remon-

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 239

strated, "suppose the balloon falls and you are all killed?"
"I would not care, so long as I was with my Sarah I"
I replied stoutly.

There was a roar of laughter, and then Sarah was
hoisted into the basket by Clairin and Gifiard, both of
whom mounted after her. There was a shout of "Cast
off," and the next thing I knew the balloon was hundreds
of feet above us, the three in the basket shrilling some
indistinguishable words of farewell.

Somebody pointed out the balloon to Perrin, who was
on his way to his office.

"There goes your pensionnaire!" he was told.
Perrin at first did not understand.
"Sarah Bernhardt is in that balloon I"
Perrin angrily rushed to the theatre, called together a
special meeting of the committee of administration, an-
nounced the news, and said that he had decided to fine
Sarah a thousand francs.

"I have had enough of her imbecilities!" he declared.
The balloon did not fly very far and came down sev-
enty miles from Paris ; and that evening the three aero-
nauts were back again, Sarah delighted beyond words
with her experience.

In the morning she was informed by Perrin that she
was to be fined. Sarah flew into a rage, went- home,
wrote out her resignation, and sent it to Perrin by a
messenger. As usual, the threat prevailed. The fine
was withdrawn, and so was Sarah's resignation.y But
Perrin did not forgive her for a long time.

240 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

For a year or more it was open war between Sarah
Bernhardt and the directors of the Comedie. Most of
the men in the company sided against Sarah. She often
complained that her male associates of the stage were
far more jealous than the women, and that they would
stoop to greater meannesses to revenge themselves. They
caused her sro many petty annoyances that she finally
made up her mind to leave the Comedie.

The idea grew on her. She felt, as she expressed it,
a prisoner in a cage of lions. Not only did they want
to control her life in the theatre, but her private life was
subject to their interference as well.

Time and time again she threatened to resign. Finally,
to appease her, they had to promise to make her a "full
member" of the company an honour not usually given
till after fifteen or twenty years with the Comedie and
accordingly raise her salary. But still she was discon-
tented- She was making 20,000 francs a year, and spend-
ing 50,000.

She decided that space was too restricted in her flat
and resolved to build for herself a private house. Pri-
vate houses in Paris, then as now, were the property only
of the wealthy. Over nine hundred out of every thousand
people live in flats.

She chose a magnificent plot on the rue Fortuny, in
what is now the exclusive residential section of the Plaine
Monceau, but which then was practically a desert. Felix
Escalier, a famous architect, was called into consultation
by the actress, and together they designed a three-story

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 241

house of noble dimensions and beautiful lines. Border-
ing it on two sides was to be a spacious garden.

Sarah could scarcely contain herself when the plans
were finally approved and the building begun. The work
seemed to her interminable. To hasten construction, a
call was sent out for more workmen, but none were to be
had, so a band of her student friends took off their coats,
donned the white aprons of masons, and gave their serv-
ices free, joyful to be of use.

In a little under a year the house was finished, and
Sarah ransacked the shops of Paris for furniture and
appointments.

Georges Clairin, madly in love with her, undertook to
paint four mural decorations, the largest of which was
in the reception hall. It represented nude figures gam-
bolling ori fleecy clouds, and made an enormous sensa-
tion.'

The sensation came from the fact that the head of the
central figure was undoubtedly that of Sarah, and there
was considerable discussion as to whether she had posed
for the entire body. Clairin finally settled the argument.

"A professional model posed for the body," he said.
"Sarah is much too thin."

The explanation satisfied everybody, for there was no
gainsaying the fact that Sarah was abnormally thin.

But the gossipy weeklies seized on the affair with avid-
ity, and Sarah's attachment to Georges Clairin soon be-
came public property. Of course, both were tremen-
dously criticised. Their denials were not listened to.

242 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Sarah was dumbfounded at the venom of some of the
attacks.

"These canaille!" she said, contemptuously referring to
her critics. "They say that I am selfish well, what
woman is not? They say that I am greedy but did you
ever know me to have a spare franc I could call my own ?
They say I am cold and haughty, but that is because I
will not suffer the presence of fools ! They say that I am
indiscreet it is they who -are indiscreet I They say that
I have never really loved, that I am cruel and ambitious,
that I pull men down and climb over their bodies on my
ascent to fame it is not true ! I am ambitious ; yes, and
I am jealous of a success won by hard work; but I am
haughty only to those whom I despise, and I am cruel
never I It is they who are cruel to me I"

"They delight in sticking knives into me!" she de-
clared on another occasion.

"I hate them!" she said again, passionately. "I hate
them! They tear down gods! All Paris is my enemy
and all Paris is at my feet."

On other occasions she was merely scornful

"Let them talk, these little people!" she would say.
"They think they are throwing stones at me, but every
stone goes to help in building the structure of. my suc-
cess!"

And it was truey me more people ranted against
Sarah, the greater she became. She was by now the
greatest feminine personality I say it in all seriousness
that France had known since Joan of Arc. ,

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 243

Her romance with Georges Clairin was a beautiful
thing. She was, I am convinced, genuinely in love with
the great painter.

She spent all her afternoons for weeks in Clairin's
studio. Sometimes they would work silently for hours,
side by side, scarcely exchanging a word. At others they
would abandon work and sit and talk to each other,
oblivious of their surroundings. Sarali inspired many
of Clairin's paintings, and was the model for several.

Once I accompanied her to Clairin's studio. It was a
great room, bare of ornament except for easels and pic-
tures that were scattered about Over a huge sofa hung
a white bear skin, similar to the one Clairin had given
to Sarah.

Clairin was not there when we arrived, and Sarah
astonished me by crossing to the sofa and proceeding to
take off her shoes and stockings.

"Whatever are you doing?" I demanded.

"He is going to paint my feet," she answered, and
indicated a large unfinished canvas, representing Sarah
as a Gypsy boy, in rags, wielding a mouth organ. A
tame bear danced to the music, and a greasy Bohemian,
presumably the boy's father, turned the handle of a street
piano.

Where this canvas went I never knew. It was not
exhibited, as far as I am aware. Some said that Sarah
destroyed it in a fit of rage, when she quarrelled with
Clairin. Her romances invariably had their climax in
these terrific disputes.

244 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

When the artist entered, clad in a green velvet jacket,
Sarah ran to him crying: "Mon petit Geogotte! Mon
petit Geogotte!"

She fondled him, kissing his face and long hair, scold-
ing him for spots of paint on his black tie, and using
little endearing adjectives that were a fresh revelation
to me of Sarah, the lover.

Clairin showed her a painting in water-colours which
he had done while visiting at Fontainebleau. Taking a
crayon, he wrote on the back: "To the Perfect Woman,"
and handed it to her.

The next day she chose a little statue she had herself
modelled, and sent it to him, with the inscription: "To
my perfect man, from Sara," spelling her name without
the "h," as she sometimes did.

Clairin presented her with fifteen different paintings,
all of which she kept until the end of her life. Five were
of herself.

These paintings were: "A Portrait of Alexandre
Dumas fils," signed by both Clairin and Dumas; "Sarah
Bernhardt, Lecturer 51 this was done as recently as
1914; "Sarah Bernhardt as Theodora"; "Portrait of
Charles Gounod"; "View of Beg-Meil"; "The Toilet of
Cupid"; "The Fool and the Skull"; "The Attack on the
Fort by the Blues"; "Sarah Bernhardt as Cleopatra";
"Sarah Bernhardt between Comedy and Tragedy"; "Re-
pose on a Rock"; "The Stairway in the Cliff"; "The
Virgin of Avila"; "Sarah Bernhardt as Theroigne de

Sarah Bernhardt in Theodora.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 245

Mericourt" ; "Characters of Comedy.'' The last was a
sketch in black-and-white.

These pictures, all of which were signed and dedicated
to Sarah by Clairin, fetched unexpectedly low prices at
the Paris sale of her effects two months after her death.
One was sold for as low as 160 francs then about two
guineas while the highest price, fifteen hundred francs,
was paid for the portrait of Sarah as Theodora, which
was conceded to be one of Clairin' s greatest achievements.

Their romance lasted for several months. Then came
the inevitable rupture, the cause of which nobody knew,
and Sarah left for a tour in America, while Clairin went
to a hermit-like seclusion in his home in the Midi.

When both returned to Paris they were no longer
lovers, but they remained very good friends, and Clairin,
until he died shortly after the Armistice, was one of the
most devoted of the little court surrounding Sarah.

He was frequently a visitor at her house, and in his
old age spent a few weeks of every year at her property
at Belle Isle, off the coast of Brittany.

Clairin was a year older than Sarah Bernhardt. He
possessed a nature very similar to hers.

CHAPTER XX

THE publication of Sarah's book "Dans les Nuages,"
which was at once a defence of her actions, a scornful
reply to her critics and a picturesque description of her
flight in the balloon, brought down on her head still more
criticism, and still further admonishment from M. Perrin,
the director of the Comedie Frangaise.

But now she lived a monarch in a little world apart.
Her art while on the stage was such that even her stern-
est opponents were obliged to hold their tongues in
reluctant admiration, while she now openly maintained
the right to live her private life as she pleased. Every
protest from Perrin brought forth the haughty reply that
if he was dissatisfied she was perfectly willing to leave
the Comedie Frangaise for ever. What made him power-
less in any struggle with her was the fact that the Comedie
was a government institution, and that Sarah had friends
In very high places.

She was a striking figure of a woman, as I remember
her at this epoch.

Her extreme slenderness, accentuated by the exag-
gerated lacing of the clothes she wore, contrived to give
her the impression of height; whereas she was in reality
no taller than the normal person. Her complexion was
naturally pale from her anaemia a malady which had

246

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 247

persisted but, not content with the effect thus achieved,
she must needs paint her face a* chalk white, relieved only
by the slender etching of her widely-separated eyebrows,
and by a pair of cleverly-reddened lips. Her forehead
was high and arched, and her hair was the same riotous
and tangled mass of crinkled confusion which had made
her remarkable as a child. Her eyes were the singularly
lovely blue of the clear sky just after the dawn light-
coloured, but seemingly of illimitable depth.

When she was serious, they would be downcast,
shielded by long, curving lashes, mysterious and almost
oriental in their pensive languor. When she was inter-
ested, they would snap into life with an extraordinary
vivacity and play of expression; when she was angry,
which was often enough, actual sparks of blue fire seemed
to dart from eyes that had miraculously grown into two
large, burning pools of wrath. No man I ever saw, ex-
cept Damala, ever long withstood the challenge of those
eyes when Sarah, wistful and imperious, desired to have
her way.

After an interview with her and an ineffectual attempt
to discipline his wilful star, Perrin invariably ended his
lecture by throwing up his hands, uttering a short word
of mingled supplication and terror, and escaping into an
inner office

Sarah was a supreme conversationalist. I never knew
anyone her match in ordinary talk. She could be eloquent
on fifty current topics, and had something original and
interesting to say about all of them. The fact that she

248 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

could hold such men as Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas
fils, Georges Clairin, Gustave Dore, and others like them,
enthralled by the sheer power of her personality as partly
expressed by her skill in conversation, is proof enough
of her many-sided genius.

She was the first great feminine adherent to the capri-
cious cult of "je m'en fichisme" which is best interpreted
as an absolute disregard of convention and an existence
studiously carried along the lines of "the individual before
the crowd."

Sarah was beautiful; she was brilliant. She was a
genius ; she was a hard-worker ; she was prodigious in her
handling of men she seldom had less than a dozen fa-
mous ones around her and her charm, as well as her
antipathetic side, was due to her sublime belief in herself
above everything and everybody.

Perrin, Got and other theatrical celebrities used to beg
and plead with her to dress in quieter and less conspicuous
ways which would be more in conformity with the fashion*

"La mode!" she exclaimed indifferently. "Je m'en fiche
de la mode! Let fashion follow me I"

And frequently fashion did. Sarah was thin, narrow-
chested, bony in places and walked with a stride. The
fashion was for plump women, of rounded and gracious
line. Sarah remained totally indifferent to the fashion,
and within a few years she found herself a leader of the
mode, with plumpness and boufonerie beating a protest-
ing retreat

When she was forty, her arms had grown so thin that

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 249

they had to be concealed, even with evening dress, so she
invented the shoulder-length glove, which immediately
jumped iftto fashion.

She launched several kinds of corsets, one of which
still bears her name. Her footwear was seized on and
copied extensively. She was the first woman in France
to wear high leather buttoned boots with an ordinary
street dress.

She was the first woman to bid her dressmaker insert
jewels in her slippers. She was the first woman to wear
ostrich plumes as an ornament to her evening coiffure.
She was the first ,woman audaciously to defy convention,
and receive he/ friends in her painter's garb of silken
pyjamas!

She did this, she did that, she did anything she pleased.
Whenever anybody started a great outcry against her,
others would shrug their shoulders and exclaim, "Mais,
c'est Sarah!" She was Sarah. That was answer enough.
If ever a woman in France has been a law unto herself,
it was Sarah at that time a whole lexicon of law, in fact.

Naturally, she got into numerous scrapes. She was
thrice sued for debt, as a result of her lavish expenditure
during the building of her house in the rue Fortuny.
Whenever she saw anything she liked, she could not rest
until she had acquired it. Her salary at the Comedie
was only 20,000 francs a year only 800, even at that
time yet with this, and the small sums left her by her
father and by several relatives, she managed to live in a

250 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

style and with an ostentation surpassed by but few per-
sons of her age.

The furniture in her house had been acquired absolutely
regardless of cost, and a lot of it was taken away again
when she did not pay for it. Dealers were glad to sell
things to her, and to take their money as and when she
paid them, for the fact that Sarah Bernhardt had bought
an article was certain to start a fad for it.

Her dresses, her hats and her shoes never cost her
anything. In later years I even heard it stated that her
dressmaker actually paid her to wear his creations! It
was a triumph for any dealer to be able to say, "Sarah
Bernhardt bought one like that," or, "Sarah Bernhardt
was wearing one like that yesterday," or, "Sarah Bern-
hardt has one in her dining-room."

The mural decorations and the works of art in her
house, fortunately, did not cost Sarah anything. They
were mostly gifts of such great friends as Georges Clairin,
Louise Abbema of whose paintings, when she died,
Sarah possessed more than eighty Sir Edward Burne-
Jones who had been caught in the siege of Paris, and
had then met and fallen captive to Sarah Ernest Duez,
Theodore Fantin-Latour, Maxime Guyon, Hector Gia-
comelli, Rene Raoul Griffon, Graham Robertson, Luc
Olivier Merson, Germain Fabien Brest, John Lewis
Brown, Robert Fleury, Vastagh Gezah, Alfred Stevens,
and many other great and famous artists of the brush.

Most of the above-mentioned persons frequented her
house* I have seen a dozen famous painters and six or

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 251

seven great authors all listening to Sarah together
and finding joy in it. She ruled her little court with a rod
of iron, but she wrapped the rod in silk. Victor Hugo,
watching her at work in her studio on one occasion, said:

"Ah! madame, how I wish I could paint I"

"But you can!" replied Sarah.

"No/' said Hugo.

"Tu es ridicule!" responded Sarah. "Anyone who can
write or who can act can paint if he tries I"

Then and there Sarah constituted herself his teacher,
with the result that Hugo became an extremely credit-
able artist, chiefly with pen-and-ink. His chief delight
was in sketching-tours, which he undertook with Sarah
during her rare holidays tours in which Clairin and
Dore would generally also take part. It was a novel and
extraordinary sight to see these three wonderful men and
this single eccentric woman set forth together on foot
from the gates of Paris, huge sketch-books under their
arms.

But things were fast approaching their inevitable climax
at the Comedie Frangaise.

Perrin and his committee had entered into a contract
with Messrs. John Hollingshead and Mayer for a six
weeks' French repertory season at the Gaiety Theatre
in London. The contract called for the appearance in
the English capital of most of the stars of the Comedie,
including Sarah Bernhardt, Sophie Croizette, Marie
Lloyd, Mounet-Sully, Coquelin and Got

Sarah was afire with excitement at the idea of playing

252 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

before a foreign audience, but a difficulty that seemed in-
surmountable presented itself*

Sarah was still only a part socletaire. An actress en-
ters the Comedie as a debutante, or kind of apprentice.
Unless she has extraordinary talent and still more ex-
traordinary luck, she is likely to remain in this decidedly
inferior position, both as regards rank and salary, for
several years. Then, by decree of the committee, en-
dorsed by the Minister of Fine Arts, she is made a part
member, with half or two-thirds of the salary of a full
member. Sometimes an actress remained at the Comedie
twenty or twenty-five years without being made a full
member. Sarah had been there nearly eight years. The
salary of a full member was thirty thousand francs a
year; Sarah was receiving twenty thousand.

The difficulty arose not so much from the question of
salary, however, as from the fact that Sarah Bernhardt
would be playing in a foreign capital, and would be in an
inferior position as regards the billing and the pro-
grammes. The custom of the Comedie was strict in this
regard: the name of the oldest societaire in rank ap-
peared first on the programme, regardless of the role she
played. This was understood in Paris; it might easily
be misunderstood in London.

"If," insisted Sar$h, "I go to London, it must be as a
full member, with a full member's privileges and emolu-

ments. 1 '

There was an immediate rebellion in the committee.
"We have had enough of her caprices I" cried Perrin.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 253

"Let her remain here, if she wants to ! I will not consent
to her demands!"

Nothing in Sarah's contract, it appeared, obliged her
to travel abroad. So it was settled that she should
not go.

Then Hollingshead and Mayer threw another bornD-
shell into the excited and harassed committee of the
Comedie Frangaise. If Sarah Bernhardt was not com-
ing, they said, they did not want the troupe at all, and
they hereby cancelled the contract!

The end of it was that Sarah obtained her full mem-
bership, as did Croizette, and the whole troupe embarked
for London. The first man to greet her as she stepped
ashore in England was Oscar Wilde. He became a great
friend of Sarah's some years later a friendship that
only ceased with his downfall.

Sarah's first visit to London was not the triumph which
she had anticipated, though she had her share of the
laurels. Her lodgings at 77, Chester Square which were
procured for her by William Jarrett, the impresario who
later managed her tour of America, were crowded with
celebrities, but they came out of curiosity and not to pay
homage.

Stories of her eccentricities had long been printed in
England. She was looked upon as a wild woman, and
her morals were much discussed and severely commented
upon in staid London society. Everything she did in
London during this first visit evoked hostile comment.
The papers praised her performances, but criticised her

254 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

sensational appearances in society, into which she was in-
troduced by Lady Dudley.

Queen Victoria vetoed a suggestion that she should
play in a State performance at Court The Prince and
Princess of Wales were not in London on this first occa-
sion, and their tolerant influence did not make itself felt

Still, there was nothing definite against Sarah, except
gossip, and so much was admitted everywhere. All fash-
ionable London fell captive to her art on the stage of the
Gaiety. The Times acclaimed her as the greatest emo-
tional actress ever seen on an English stage. She made
her London debut in the second act of Phedre, into which
she put so much of herself that after the performance
she fainted from exhaustion and had to be carried home.
"Such a scene of enthusiasm," wrote the Standard, "has
rarely and perhaps never been witnessed in an English
theatre."

Meanwhile, a tremendous campaign was going on
against her in the Paris newspapers. They said that by
her eccentric actions she had disgraced the Comedie Fran-
gaise abroad, and brought dishonour oh her country. It
was a despicable campaign, and was founded on prac-
tically nothing. But her enemies in Paris were deter-
mined to make hay while the cat was away, if I may be
pardoned for mixing up two proverbs.

Gladstone, who was much struck by the charming and
emotional French actress, introduced her to King Leo-
pold of Belgium, who fell an utter slave to her beauty.
She was seen with the Belgian monarch everywhere, and,

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 255

as Leopold enjoyed probably the worst reputation of any
prince in -Europe, the fact that he was obviously
enamoured of Sarah did not enhance her reputation

This incident, in fact, in Republican France, was only
an added cause for dissatisfaction. Leopold was not
liked in Paris, and he was barely tolerated in London;
yet Sarah seemed to find pleasure in his conversation and
amusement in his company. He had, of course, the
entree everywhere, and as often as not he appeared with
Sarah, generally to the secret dismay of his hostess.

There were houses in London at this period where
certain representatives of royalty were looked at askance ;
and this condition of affairs obtained also in many Euro-
pean capitals. When I was in Moscow I was amazed
to find that there were several aristocratic but untitled
families who would not have dreamed of receiving a
Grand Duke into their homes.

One of the rumours that gained particular credit in
London was to the effect that Sarah smoked cigars. She
received several boxes from male admirers !

Another story was that she paraded the streets dressed
as a man. I doubt both of the stories myself espe-
cially that as to the cigars, for Sarah never smoked at
all but they were widely credited in London, and those
of the Paris newspapers that were hostile to the actress
naturally seized on them and reprinted them with avidity.
Editorials were published severely criticising her con-
duct, and these finally grew so numerous that Sarah de-
cided to have done with them once and for all.

256 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

She accordingly wrote a letter to Albert Wolff, the
director of the Figaro, announcing that she had decided
to resign from the Comedie Frangaise.

Nobody believed she would actually resign she had
threatened it too many times before but her announce-
ment in the Figaro caused huge excitement. The Min-
ister of Fine Arts telegraphed personally to Sarah de-
manding an explanation. Sarah disdained to reply.
The Comedie troupe was recalled from London, and
Sarah was warned not to pfey for a while, as the public,
"after the things she had done in London," would be
sure to hiss her. She insisted on playing, however, and
was given an ovation. It was another triumph for her
personality. But she had the critics against her en
masse.

A few weeks later Perrin refused to postpone the
premiere of UAventuriere, in which Sarah was playing
Clorinde, despite her statement that she was physically
unable to act. The first night was a failure. Sarah was
unanimously attacked in the newspapers, and this time,
enraged at Perrin, she did resign.

She wrote her resignation, posted it, and then fled from
Paris, so that no one could call her back. She was gone
five weeks, and nobody knew her address.

When she returned, she found Jarrett waiting for her
with a new contract for London, to be followed by one
for America. She accepted both, and returned to Lon-
don with her own company. There the eccentricities of
her previous visit were forgiven, and her triumph was

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 257

complete until she made the serious mistake of taking

her son to the home of Lord and Lady R , where she

was invited to play.

Lady R 's indignation at Sarah's daring action,

though Sarah herself probably considered it nothing out
of the ordinary, knew no bounds, and she gave secret in-
structions to her butler. This functionary advanced be-
fore Sarah into the huge ball-room, which was crowded
with people distinguished in British society, and sol-
emnly announced:

"Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt and her son I"

After this she was, of course, unmercifully snubbed,
and left in a rage ten minutes later. This was Sarah
Bernhardt's last appearance in British society until
Queen Victoria, yielding to the entreaties of the Prince
of Wales, lifted the ban and commanded her to give a
performance of La Dame aux Camillas at Windsor
Castle.

But this recognition did not come until many long
years afterwards.

CHAPTER XXI

"ENOUGH of Sarah Bernhardt ! Now that she has finally
left the Comedie Frangaise, let us forget herl"

This was the slogan of Sarah's enemies in the year
1880* And many of her friends thought, with a sigh of
relief, that they were to be spared for a little while, at
any rate, the pain of the extraordinary publicity the
actress provoked.

Sarah was now thirty-six years old. Her son, Maurice,
had reached his seventeenth year, and was already caus-
ing her a good deal of trouble, due to her eccentric way
of bringing him up.

She was original in her treatment of his childish faults.
When he was six, he persisted in a habit of chewing the
tips of his gloves, and no correction, apparently, could
cure him of the habit. Exasperated, Sarah one day made
him take a pair of gloves to the kitchen, fry them in
butter, and eat half of one of them I The cure proved
effective.

I do not intend to devote much of this biography to
Maurice Bernhardt He is still alive, and I understand
he is writing his own memoirs. It is my opinion, how-
ever, that it was not he himself but Sarah's own con-
ception of the boon of motherhood which throughout her
life was perhaps its outstanding influence.

Maurice was a wilful, headstrong, nervous child

*$*

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 259

strong for his size, and a handful for the various nurses
who were engaged to look after him.

Sarah was stern with him at times, indulgent at others ;
and she educated him to rely upon her, and never once,
even in her old age, did she rely upon him.

When he was twelve, Maurice was already quite a
"man about town," preferring adult companionship and
evincing precocious likes and dislikes. When he was fif-
teen, Sarah settled a large sum on him and before he was
twenty his income from her was 60,000 francs annually.
She always told her friends that she did not mind what
he did with the money, so long as he dressed himself
properly.

Thus, almost from infancy, Maurice was accustomed
to an amount of luxury that was far in advance of his
mother's real circumstances.

The sole thing on which she insisted was that he should
learn the art of fencing, so as to defend his life in case of
a duel. This art, when once learned, got the youngster
into several scrapes, which cost Sarah a good deal of
money.

As a small child Maurice appeared with Sarah on the
stage on one or two occasions, but he evinced no great
talent for the theatre. He also, when a young man, at-
tempted the art of playwriting, assisted by his mother,
but met with no greater success. In later years he tried
to persuade his mother to make him general manager of
the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre, in her stead. It was the
only thing she ever denied him.

260 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Sarah's various studios and flats were always filled
with pictures of Maurice at all ages many of them being
sketches or paintings by Sarah herself,

So much for Maurice Bernhardt. He was an affec-
tionate son, and if he has not been exceptionally useful
during his long life, it is the fault of his haphazard up-
bringing. He is now a father, a grandfather, a member
of the best Paris clubs, a well-known figure in baccarat
rooms and on race-courses, and he still maintains his ex-
cellent reputation as a swordsman, Sarah died in his
arms.

It was in 1880, before she left for her first American
tour in October of that year that Sarah Bernhardt
first organised a company of her own. This was placed
by her under the paternal direction of Felix Duquesnel,
Sarah's old friend at the Odeon, and consisted of nine
artistes, who had been carefully selected for the purpose
of supporting her on tour. They were Madame Kalb,
Pierre Berton, Mary Jullien, Jeanne Bernhardt, Madame
Devoyod, Jean Dieudonne, L. Talbot, J. Train and my-
self. I was, of course, the youngster of the troupe.

Our repertoire at this time consisted of eight plays:
Hernani, Froufrou, La Dame aux Camillas, Le Sphinx,
L'Etrangere, La Princesse George, Adrienne Lecouvreur
and Phedre. Let me now set forth the story of how La
Dame aux Camelias, one of Sarah's greatest triumphs,
proved a failure until she brought her own genius to bear
on the play and transformed it into a masterpiece.

La Dame aux Camelias, as a matter of fact, was in its

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 261

original form written by Dumas fils after earnest con-
sultation with Sarah. It was never played, however, and
lay for some years neglected in a drawer. One day
Dumas took it out and read a few pages of the second
act to Sarah, for the purpose of eliciting her opinion on
the piece.

"Let me take it with me!" she asked, and Dumas gave
the manuscript to her.

A few days later she brought it back to him with a
third of it crossed out and corrected. New lines had
been added to practically all the important passages, and
part of the second act had been cut out entirely.

"There!" she told him. 'Tour play is better like
that I If you will revise it as I have marked the manu-
script, I will play it and make it a success."

"It is I who am the playwright and not you, made-
moiselle!" he said angrily.
Bernhardt turned on her heel.

"Very well!" she flung at him over her shoulder; "a
day will come when you will beg me to produce your
play!"

Dumas refused to be influenced by such criticism, and
eventually the play was produced, in a small way, at the
Comedie, and then at another theatre, but had no success
at either. Sarah's amendments and suggestions had been
ignored.

After Sarah had organised her own company, Pierre
Berton one day went to her with the information that
Dumas wished to see her.

262 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

"What about?" asked Sarah.

"About a play called La Dame aux Camelias. We
were reading it together last night and I believe it can
be played by us with success. In fact, it is a play abso-
lutely written for you 1"

"Did you tell Dumas that?" asked Sarah, grimly.

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

"He said that he agreed with me."

"And that was all?"

"That was all except that he asked that I should
bring the matter to your attention."

Sarah laughed. "I told Dumas that he would one day
beg me to play this thing for him," she said, "and you
may tell him that if he wants me to, he must do just that
beg!"

Berton must have taken the message diplomatically to
Dumas, for the next day the latter was announced at
Sarah's house.

I was not present at the interview, but at the end of
it Sarah informed us that La Dame aux Camelias was to
be included in our repertoire.

Knowing Sarah's temperament and her obstinacy, I
presume Dumas begged. At any rate, the book of the
play, as it was placed in our hands shortly afterwards,
contained all the original corrections which she had made
and which Dumas had at first ignored.

We produced La Dame (as it was always called) at
Brussels, whitfier we had gone on the earnest representa-

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 263

tions of King Leopold, who was still greatly enamoured
of Sarah.

In Brussels La Dame obtained no success whatever.
The Belgians much preferred Adrienne Lecowvreur and
Froufrou. It was in the last-named play that Sarah
had scored her biggest success in London, on her second
visit as an independent artiste. Sarcey, who had written
what he called "Sarah's Epitaph" when she left the
Comedie, saying that it was "time to send naughty chil-
dren to bed," was compelled to make a special journey
to London in order to write reviews of Sarah's extraor-
dinary productions there.

Instead of her light becoming dimmer, it blazed higher
and higher with each month that separated her from her
"imprisonment" at the Comedie Frangaise.

Yes . . . imprisonment was what Sarah considered it.

"At last I am free and my own mistress," she said.
"Perrin cannot make me work when I don't want to, and
all the critics can go to the devil 1"

It was predicted that the fine of one hundred thousand
francs imposed on Sarah for breaking her contract with
the Comedie would be a blow from which she would find
it hard to recover.

"We shall hear less of our dear Sarah now! She will
go away and leave us in peace I" wrote Paul de St. Vic-
tor, her ancient enemy of the Ruy Bias banquet.

But instead of sinking under the blow, Sarah only
worked the harder. She was absolutely tireless at this
period. Her visits to London and to Brussels were or-

264 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

ganised chiefly to avoid the process-servers, who were
hammering at the door of her house in Paris with blue
papers ordering her to pay the hundred thousand francs.

Sarah had not then the money to pay her fine, but for
pne full year her creditors could not legally obtain a
Judgment against her by default (which would have
meant the sacrifice of her house, and of all its treasures).
So after they had made the customary three visits to her
Par\s home, had knocked thrice on the door, and had in-
stituted condemnation proceedings, Sarah returned to
Paris 'and set about organising a whirlwind tour of the
provinces, to precede her departure for America.

Sarah met the Prince and Princess of Wales at Brus-
sels, and charmed and was charmed by them. They saw
her in Froufrou while the guests of the King and Queen
of the Belgians. This was . the beginning of a long and
precious friendship between Sarah and tliQ Princess
(afterwards Queen Alexandra) which lasted until Sarah's
death.

After Sarah's Brussels visit the Princess who was by
birth Danish, as everybody knows obtained for us a
Royal command to perform before the King and Queen
of Denmark at Copenhagen. Five performances only
were asked for, and for these Sarah demanded 120,000
francs and our expenses. The sum was immediately
agreed to.

Sarah did not like Denmark. She was in a bad hu-
mour throughout the visit. We were lent the Royal
yacht, on which to make a trip on the fjords. It was a

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 265

lovely day and I can hear still the beautiful voices of "the
Upsal Choir, blending so perfectly with the grandeur of
the landscape.

Vicomte de Bondy, an attache then at the French
Legation, met us on the trip and begged me to introduce
him to Sarah. I agreed, but when we approached her
we were dismayed to hear her giving her opinion of the
country to a friend, in no uncertain terms.

"Je m'en fiche de leur pays! Us m'embetent!" she
cried. The nearest translation to this, in English slang,
would be: "I'm fed up with their country! They bore
me to death 1" Only the language was a trifle stronger!

When these phrases reached our ears the Vicomte
stopped suddenly. Then he raised his hat, and turned
on his heel.

"I do not think I want to meet your Sarah!" he said
shortly, and forthwith he disappeared from our party.

I recounted the incident to Sarah the next day, as we
sat on deck of a steamer which was carrying us back to
France.

"And he was a Frenchman I" she exclaimed. "Why,
what you heard me say was nothing ! I said a great deal
more to the Crown Prince, and he only laughed I"

Sarah's freedom of language was at times embar-
rassing.

Baron Magnus, the then German Minister in Den-s
mark, was an old inhabitant of Paris, and had known
Sarah in the days before the war. But since 1870 Sarah
could not bear to look at a German.

266 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

When the baron got up at a banquet, therefore, and,
raising a glass of champagne, jovially proposed her
health, the actress could not restrain her anger. She
sprang to her feet and raised her glass high in the air,
to the astonishment of the King, fne Queen and various
other members of the Royal family who were seated
round her and probably, it must be admitted, to their
secret amusement.

"I accept your toast, Monsieur the Minister of Prus-
sia," she cried, "but only on condition that you extend it
to include the whole of La Belle France I"

Baron Magnus turned white. He could think of noth-
ing to say, and he sat down. The band struck up the
"Marseillaise" and then, courteously enough, consider-
ing what had passed, he got on his feet again.

Long afterwards, he and Sarah became very good
friends. But he never tired of telling the story of how
Sarah had startled a King and Queen and humbled an
Imperial Ambassador.

On September 4, 1880, we left Paris on our first tour
of the provinces under Duquesnel's managership. The
tour, which lasted twenty-eight days, was a tremendous
success, and in October, a few days after our return to
Paris, Sarah left for America under Abbey's manage-
ment. I did not go with her, my family being unwilling
that I should make the journey before having completed
my studies.

CHAPTER XXII

As I said at the conclusion of the last chapter, I did not
accompany Sarah Bernhardt on her first visit to the
United States, and I can therefore give no first-hand im-
pressions of the trip. What is more, she told me so much
when she returned, and so mixed were her own impres-
sions, that it is hard for me to say now whether she
actually enjoyed her visit to the New World or not

"What a detestable country I" she would say some-
times. "What a marvellous country 1" she would ex-
claim at others. Similar mixed conclusions are often
brought back from America by visitors even now.

She adored the scenery, the energy and the extrava-
gance of the Americans, and she thought the American
men perfect all except the reporters. But she hated
the American women and she hated most of them until
she died

"Their voices 1" she would exclaim, and v shudderingly
put both hands to her ears. "Quelle horreurJ"

When she opened in New York, one of her most ex-
pensive costumes, she told me, was completely ruined
by women visiting her in her dressing-room, who insisted
on fondling it and exclaiming over its rich embroidery.

During her visit to London, in the June of the year
when she first went to America, she met Henry Irving.

267

268 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

"They tell me, madame, that you are going to the
United States ?" said Irving.

"Yes, 1 ' said Sarah. "I must make money, and the
Americans seem to have it all!" Even at this period
that was the generally accepted idea !

"Madame," said Irving, "what you say saddens me
extremely I America is a country of barbarians 1 They,
know nothing about the theatre, and yet they presume to
dictate to us ! If I were you I would not go to America,
madame ! What you will gain in dollars, you will lose
in heart-throbs at their ignorance of your art!"

Irving himself, however, went to America a few years
later.

Sarah brought back from the United States six hun-
dred thousand francs, a variety of animals including a
lynx, which bit her chambermaid and had to be killed
a week after its arrival in Paris a profound respect for
American enterprise, and the reputation she had long
been hoping to make for La Dame aux Camelias.

When Alexandre Dumas was told of her intention to
play La Dame in New York he cried disgustedly:
"That's it! Try my play on the barbarians f"

As a matter of fact, Booth's Theatre, where Sarah
opened in America, was filled on the first night with almost
the entire French colony in New York, which was a con-
siderable one. Practically the only Americans there
were the critics, and a few wealthy society people who
held regular boxes. The play chosen for the first night
was Adrienne Lecouvreur.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 269

The next day Abbey, the impresario, rushed into
Sarah's bedroom Sarah usually received her business
folk in the morning while still in bed waving a bundle
of papers. His face wore the look of one stricken by
some grievous blow.

Stopping short, he gave Sarah a look of indescribable
anguish, and then sat abruptly down and mopped his
face. He could not speak.

Sarah sat up in bed, fright on her countenance.

'What is it? What is it? The theatre has been
burned down, and my costumes are destroyed?"

"No," said Abbey, "but your reputation is!"

The American papers, without exception, said that
Sarah Bernhardt was a magnificent actress, but that her
repertoire was filled with plays which should never be
shown on the American stage. "They are doubtless con-
sidered all right in immoral Paris," said the Globe, "but
they will certainly only succeed in disgusting Americans."

And they proceeded to tear poor Adrienne Lecouvreur
to pieces I A highly improper play, they said, and one
which should never be given in the presence of American
women. One paper seriously advised the police to de-
scend on the theatre, close the performances, "arrest this
woman, and send her back to France."

Sarah was bewildered. She had played Adrienne in
Paris, in London, in Brussels and in Copenhagen, and
everywhere it had been met with tremendous applause.
This was her first experience of American methods.

The fact of the matter was that only one of the critics

270 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

present at the opening night knew French, and they gath-
ered quite wrong impressions from the few words they
did understand. The play, given at full length in a
word for word English translation, would doubtless have
been insufferably vulgar. In French, it was whimsical,
delightful in its irony, and entirely free from anything
objectionable whatsoever. The American critics, how-
ever, could not understand the subtlety of the lines, and
they gathered their opinions solely from the action.

The manager of the theatre followed Abbey into
Sarah's bedroom. He wore a strained, a hunted look.

"You have seen the newspapers?" he asked Abbey.

"Yes I" Consternation was in the eyes of all three.

"What shall we do?" inquired Abbey, at last

"There Ts only one thing to do we must choose an-
other repertoire! They will have us arrested soon, if
this keeps up!"

"But that is ridiculous!" angrily said Sarah. "Never
before in my life have I been so insulted 1 I will either
play La Dame aux Camelias to-night, or I will pack up
and return to France by the next boatl"

The two men cried out in protest.

"You can't do that!" said Abbey. "There must be
some way out of the difficulty 1"

"I shall play La Dame aux Camelias to-night, as ar-
ranged!" said Sarah, as if this was the last word on the
subject.

Abbey and the manager of Booth's Theatre took their

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 271

departure, after arguing with her for some time, but in
vain.

"She will do it 1" said Abbey, with conviction. "When
Sarah Bernhardt makes up her mind, heaven and earth
cannot change it."

"But we must do something 1" said the manager, in
dqspair.

"I have it!" exclaimed Abbey. "We will play La
Dame, but we will call it something else. They will
never know the difference."

When Sarah Bernhardt arrived at the 'theatre that
night, she was astounded to see huge red placards out-
side, announcing that she would play Camille.

She rushed to Jarrett, the first man she met on the
stage.

"What is it, this Camitte?" she exclaimed furiously.

"Oh yes, you do," said Jarrett, smiling urbanely.
"Camille is La Dame!"

"Oh I" cried Sarah, and burst into uncontrollable
laughter.

The theatre was packed to the roof, this time with a
most representative crowd of Americans. The publicity
of 'the morning had done its work. Sarah Bernhardt
was playing immoral pieces? Well, New York didn't
know what to do about it, but New York decided to go
and see for itself.

This sort of theatrical psychology is now a well-un-
derstood thing. Even in Paris, when a revue is not mak-

272 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Ing expenses, they bribe the police to make a complaint
about the immorality of one of the scenes and then its
success is assured. But it was the first time such a thing
had been known in America.

New York liked Camilla it liked it enormously!
The critics were not fools, though. Every paper an-
nounced the next day that Camilla was in reality La Dame
aux Camillas, but with an American namel

They also said that the play had been forbidden in
London by Queen Victoria, which was true; and were
very severe on the "prudish Queen" for her "narrow-
mindedness." Completely forgetting their fulminations
of only twenty-four hours before, they said that it was
an unthinkable crime that such a beautiful play should
ever have been banned anywhere. It was rather
"Frenchy," they admitted, but Sarah's magnificent acting
more than made up for that.

Sarah Bernhardt made more than a dozen tours in
America, and Camllle was invariably her greatest suc-
cess there. It broke all records for receipts in New
York City.

The reputation of the play crossed the Atlantic before
Sarah did. Alexandre Dumas did not know whether to
be delighted or dismayed. The "barbarians" had liked
his play!

The success of La Dame in America encouraged Sarah
to give it a fair trial in France, and elsewhere in Europe*
Eventually it became, after Phedre and Le Passant, her
greatest success. Even JJAiglon another play which

,The Real Sarah Bernhardt

received its original baptism of success in the United
States could not rival it in popularity.

All of which may go to show that American audiences
have a better sense of the dramatic than have audiences
in Europe or it may not!

After witnessing a performance of Le Sphinx, which
also obtained an enormous success in New York, Commo-
dore Vanderbilt, who was then at the hey-day of his
power in New York, but was not yet accepted in society
because of his bluff and hearty not to say indifferent
manners, was announced to Sarah in her dressing-room.
She had heard of this remarkable man, and was anxious
to meet him. Her account of the conversation, which
took place through an interpreter, was amusing.

"His first words to me" (said Sarah), "were, 'You
are a Jewess, aren't you, madame?'

"I was offended at his manner, and replied frigidly,
'No, monsieur, I am a Catholic V

" That's peculiar,' said Vanderbilt, 'I heard you were
a Jewess. However, it ,don]t matter. I came to pre-
sent my respects. You're the only woman who ever
made me cry!'

"I laughed nobody could resist him. Tep, by
gorry,' went on the multi-millionaire, 'you made me cry!
An' I've taken a box for every night you are billed to
play!'"

He kept his word. Looking across the footlights,
night after night, throughout twenty-three performances,
Sarah never failed to see Vanderbilt in his box. Every

274 The Real Sarah Bernhardt .

time he saw her looking at him, he took out a gigantic
handkerchief and solemnly wiped his eyes. When she
left New York, he was among those who saw her off on
the boat.

"Ma'am," he said, "I'd like to give you a present.
What would you like the most?"

Some women, hearing such an avowal from a multi-
millionaire, would have thought of jewels. But Sarah
was more original.

"Give me your handkerchief I" she replied promptly.

Vanderbilt was much taken aback, but took out his
handkerchief and gave it to her.

Sarah thanked him. "I shall keep this always," she
told him, "in memory of the time I made Vanderbilt
cry!"

When she got back to Paris, she had it framed and
hung on the wall of her boudoir, but on one of the several
occasions that her furniture was seized for debt, she lost
it, and Vanderbilt had meanwhile died.
, Theodore Roosevelt, then a very young man, was an-
other of those who met Sarah Bernhardt during her first
visit to New York. He was a firm friend of hers until
he died, and invariably visited her when he was on one of
his trips abroad.

A letter from Roosevelt, extolling her genius, was one
of the few she kept and had framed.' It hung until the
day of her death in the little ante-chamber outside her
bedroom.

In this letter the former President said in one pas-

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 275

sage : "I have altered my plans so as to arrive in Paris
after you return from Spain. I could not come to Paris
and miss seeing my oldest and best friend there."

During her tour of America in 1892, Sarah had dinner
with Roosevelt, and she loved to recount the experience
to her friends on her return to Paris.

"An unforgettable character 1" she would sajTr^and
then would add: "Ah, but that man and I, we could
rule the world!"

They came near to doing it, he on one side as President
of the United States, and she, on the other, as the un-
crowned Queen of Paris.

Booth, James Hubbard, James Wilcox and James K.
Hackett were other Americans whom Sarah counted
among her warmest friends. Hackett represented the
American stage at her funeral.

It has often been commented upon that Sarah Bern-
hardt never had an American lover. I heard her speak
of t&is one day with regret.

"I am sure the Americans must be great lovers," she
said; "they are so strong, so primitive, and so childish in
their ardour. The English are wonderful men to love,
because they possess the faculty of bending one to their
likes, dislikes and moods without seeming to make it an
imposition; but the Americans are greater, for they bend
themselves to suit you."

This absence of Americans in Sarah's sentimental life
is best explained by the short duration of each of her
tours of America and the distances covered during them.

276 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Many towns in America saw Sarah only for twenty-four
hours, and the whole period was a ceaseless whirl of ar-
riving, rehearsing, playing and departing. She was a
genius at organisation and insisted on attending to the
larger details of her tours herself.

After three weeks in America, Sarah learned sufficient
English to know the simpler expressions, and before 1895
she spoke it very well. On her tours in America she
invariably travelled by special train, the "Sarah Bern-
hardt Special," but this was not by her own arrangement,
and she did not like it.

"They will not put one's special coaches on the fast
trains," she explained, "and at night they back one's car
into a siding, where one is kept awake by the noise of
the goods trains being made up, shunting, arriving and
departing."

On her last two visits to America she did not use either
a special train or a special car, but travelled in drawing-
room sleepers. She said she found it easier and "beau-
coup plus pratique."

CHAPTER XXIII

SARAH'S first tour of the United States and Canada occu-
pied seven months, during which she visited fourteen
states and four provinces, played in more than fifty
theatres and appeared before the public more than one
hundred and fifty times.

When she returned to France, warships fired salutes,
the entire city of Havre was beflagged and illuminated,
and some of the most distinguished persons in France
were on the quay to greet her.

She had departed an enfant terrible, to use the mot of
Sarcey ; she returned an idol, feverishly acclaimed. Enfin,
France was once more to salute its Sarah I

Never before had any woman become such an entirely
national character. Others had risen to similar artistic
greatness Rachel was probably as great a tragedienne
as was Sarah at this epoch, and Sarah always declared
that never in her life had she attained the sublime heights
of Rachel's art but none had become at the same time
a popular figure amongst the masses, to whom actresses
until now had always seemed beings apart.

The theatre has always been a cult in France, much
more so than in any other nation, but in the sixties and
seventies it was a cult practised only by the few who
possessed the requisite education to understand the diffi-

377

278 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

cult verse, the delightful satire, the delicate irony of the
poets whose work then constituted nine-tenths of. the
plays performed. Or, on the other hand, there were the
so-called popular theatres, but these were vulgar bur-
lesques of what the popular theatre is to-day.

It was Sarah Bernhardt, more than anyone else, who
transformed, with her magic touch, the theatre in France
from the superior, intellectual toy of the cultured few to
the amusement and recreation of the many. This she
accomplished not only by her insistence on dramatic
values, as much as on literary excellence on scenic per-
fection as much as on the handling of phrases but by
her own personal genius in finding the "common touch."

When she returned from the United States, it was to
find preparations being made for her to play Theodora,
the new play by Victorien Sardou, who was just then
coming to the fore. But several other matters intervened.

First, she fell in love with Philippe Gamier, an actor
of considerable talent; secondly, Garnier persuaded her
to make a Grand Tour of Europe ; thirdly, she was intro-
duced to Jules Paul Damala, who took her away from
Garnier and made her his wife ; fourthly, Victorien Sar-
dou, on the advice of Pierre Berton, withdrew his offer
asking her to play Theodora and suggested that instead
she should play Feodora, an older play by him and one
well-tried by public favour.

These events tumbled one after another into the life
of Sarah Bernhardt, and all had their influence on it.

She first became really intimate with Philippe Garnier

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 279*

at a banquet given to celebrate her return. I remember
that Sarah gave a demonstration at this banquet of how
the Americans ate with their knives and fingers, and kept
us all convulsed by her description of American food.

"Mon ami" she said to the actor Decori, who sat next
me, "y u would not believe it the Americans never take
more than a quarter of an hour to dine, and they eat in
whichever order the cook has prepared the dishes. If
the fruit is ready, then they eat that first ! Ugh ! It was
terrible!" She shuddered.

The American cuisine was always one of Sarah's pet
abominations, and on other visits to the United States
she was careful to take her own cook as well as a supply
of food, wines and condiments. When Edison invited
her in 1890 to one of his country houses, she is said to
have arrived there with a cook of her own and an entire
kitchen staff 1

Though Sarah herself liked to make fun of the Amer-
icans, she never allowed anyone else to do so ; and when
Dore, who had visited America, related a humorous anec-
dote somewhat too cutting in its sarcasm, Sarah caught
him up sharply. Dore replied with equal acerbity, and it
was Garnier who distinguished himself by leaping into
the breach and smoothing down the ruffled feathers of
the two friends.

Sarah noticed him, began an animated conversation
with him, and found him spirituel in the French sense
of the word well-informed and charming. She invited
him to call and see her.

280 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

He called frequently, and a week later was made a star
member of Sarah's company. It was Garnier who in-
sisted that she should exploit the publicity gained from
her American tour by undertaking at once another whirl-
wind tour of Europe, this time going as far as Russia.

The prospect appealed to Sarah, but she was tired and
not over-anxious to undertake the monumental work of
organising such an expedition. So Garnier did this for
her, and within two months had the itinerary completed.
In the meantime Sarah had made a most tragic ac-
quaintance that of Damala.

This man was a Greek, of good family, who had orig-
inally been destined for diplomacy, and .iad come to
France to pursue his studies. In Paris h> had rapidly
acquired the reputation of being the "handsomest man
in Europe."

He was tall, physically of classic beauty, and with a
passionate, Oriental face, which was dominated by a pair
of warm brown eyes, shielded by lashes of girlish length.
One of his principal attractions to women was his fine,
silky, brown beard, worn in the manner prescribed in
France by fashion of the early eighties.

The "Diplomat Apollo" was the name by which he
was jocularly known among his friends; and jealous hus-
bands and lovers talked of him as the mcst dangerous
man in Paris.

He had had numerous affairs before he met and fell
in love, after his Oriental fashion, with Sarah Bernhardt.
One was with the wife of Paul Meissonnier, a Parisian

The Real Sarah Bernhardt

banker, whose reputation he had ruined to the extent of
forcing her to leave France.

Another was with the daughter of a Vaucluse magis-
trate, who left her parents and a comfortable home to
follow Damala to Paris, where he deserted her when
her baby was born. This girl wrote a book exposing
Damala, after he had married Sarah Bernhardt, but the
book was suppressed. I never heard what became of her.
Perhaps the Seine could tell.

Young, beautiful and a dare-devil, Damala, when he
met Bernhardt, was a figure to delight the gods of evil.
There was no vice to which he was not addicted, no evil
thing which hi would not attempt. His Oriental parties,
at which tho$ taking part divested themselves of their
clothing and plunged naked into baths of champagne,
were the talk of Paris.

It was inevitable that Bernhardt, the famous actress,
and Damala, the almost equally notorious bon viveur,
should eventually meet. Each knew the reputation of
the other, and their curiosity was only the more whetted
thereby.

Each delighted to play with fire, and especially with
the dangerously devastating fire which smoulders eter-
nally within tfie human soul.

Bernhardt prided herself on her ability to conquer
men, to reduce them to the level of slaves; Damala
vaunted his ability as a hunter and a spoiler of women.

No man, said Bernhardt, could long resist her im-
perious will; no woman, said Damala, could long remain

282 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

impervious to his fatal charm and to prove it he would
exhibit with pride the clattering bones in his closet.

Like grains of mercury in a bowl of sand, their two
natures were inevitably attracted towards each other.
Both were serenely confident of the issue of that coming
clash of wills.

Damala boasted to his friends that, as soon as he
looked at her, the great Sarah Bernhardt would be
counted on his long list of victims; and Bernhardt was
no less certain that*she had only to command for Damala
to succumb.

She was all woman, feline in her charm and attraction
for men, but herculean in the labour which was in reality
the greater half of her life. Damala was only half a
man; he had the exterior, the sexual attract! 01 of one,
but he lacked the vital power to live and to endure by
the labour of his hands and brain.

He was beautiful and brilliant, but only the shell was
left of his manhood, which he had burned out years before
his time, for he was younger than Sarah by three years.
Sarah, despite all the marvellous things which she had
already accomplished, had the best of her span of life
before her. Damala was indolent, unambitious except
as regards women, hot-headed, quick to take up an insult,
and an unscrupulous fiend when his passions were aroused.
He had the presence and manners of a gentleman and
.the mind of a chimpanzee.

Even before he met Sarah, Damala was a victim to the
vice of morphine, and in that curious stratum of society

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 283

which is composed of drug-takers, he met Jeanne Bern-
hardt, Sarah's sister, who had no right to the name, but
who had assumed it at the behest of their mother.

Jeanne had succumbed to morphine before she was
twenty-five. She had followed Sarah's footsteps into the
theatre, but she had none of the talent of her great half-
sister, nor had she the beauty, despite her early promise.

She was a peculiar-looking woman, with dark hair, a
thin face, deep green pools for eyes, a weak chin and
uncertain mouth. She could fill a small part in a play,
with the aid of Sarah's careful coaching, but she could
not be depended upon ; and at times, under the influence
of her special drug, would commit the worst blunders.
On more than one occasion she had almost ruined a play.

Poor Jeanne 1 She had much that was good in her.
She loved Sarah with a passion which was extraordinary,
to say the least, considering the earlier lack of devotion
to one another that characterised the household of Julie
Bernard.

That poor lady was now dead, at the age of fifty-one.
She had lived long enough, however, to see her unwanted
child rise to heights of fame that were almost dizzy,
when regarded from her own comparatively small emi-
nence of beauty and coquette.

The baby she had left to the tender mercies of a con-
cierge's wife, and all but abandoned; the thin, delicate
child who had wanted to be^^jjun, and whom she had
never really understood; that beingf*whom she had cre-
ated, fruit of perhaps the only genuine passion of her

284 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

empty life, had become the favourite toast of the world,
the darling of two hemispheres, with kings paying hom-
age to her beauty and her art.

It is to be doubted whether Julie ever really under-
stood the miracle that had happened. It is to be doubted
also whether she ever credited Sarah with the genuine
greatness that was hers. Almost to the day of her death,
in fact, she was steadily lamenting her daughter's ex-
travagances and eccentricities she, of all women, whose
foibles had once shocked the gayest city in the world !

It takes a strong will and a cool head to survive the
fast life of the theatre, especially when that life is lived
as Sarah Bernhardt lived it. Though Sarah might ap-
pear strong; though her constitution, which had once been
delicate, might now seem to be made of spun steel, in
reality she was still delicate extremely so. It was her
will that triumphed, the will to accomplish, to create, to
live the will which is another name for genius.

But little Jeanne, the centre of her mother's fond
hopes, had neither strength of body nor power of will.
She had not genius, only a facility for mimicry. The life
that sustained and exhilarated Sarah, ruined and finally
killed her.

Sarah's feeling for Jeanne was the pity which is akin
to love, and not the sisterly devotion she might have felt
had her earlier history been less unfortunate. She helped
the girl all she could, saw that she had work, and that
she was able to earn sufficient money. She took her to
America, in the hope that travel and the change into a

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 285

newer, freer atmosphere would work the miracle she so
ardently desired.

Sarah's hatred for drugs was one of the abiding pas-
sions of her life. She herself had such an unquenchable
spirit within her that she could not imagine the plight of
those who were compelled to indulge a fanciful morbidity
with such artificial stimulants.

Once, shortly after discovering that her half-sister was
taking morphine, she thrashed Jeanne with a riding-whip
and locked her "in her bedroom. There for four days
she kept her a prisoner, denying her both food and drug
in an unscientific attempt to tame her desires, which, of
course, ended in failure. Despite all Sarah's efforts,
Jeanne slipped gradually down the hill and into the pit
which is the inevitable fate of those who seek the bliss
of this artificial paradise.

Morphine had come into general use as a medicine
during the war of 1870, and many doctors and soldiers
had learned to listen to its dangerous appeal. They
taught its use to their women, and the alleged miracles
worked by the drug became noised abroad. Its use be-
came almost fashionable !

People who frequented the salons took it shamelessly,
just as anyone else would take a glass of champagne. It
was said that opium dulled your cares and finally made
you forget them, but that morphine kept you conscious
of them and actually made you enjoy them!

Jeanne and Damala were members of a group of mor-
phine-takers connected with the stage, who made no secret

a&6 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

of their vice. Damala was a fair amateur actor It was
in this direction and not diplomacy that his ambitions lay
and delighted to frequent the coulisses (as the French
term the wings), the Green Room, and the other mys-
terious Haunts which lie behind the footlights. Many
were his victories in this half -world of pleasure and of
work.

When Jeanne spoke of Damala to Sarah, the latter
felt herself repelled and yet fascinated. Outwardly she
denounced him, but inwardly she was enormously inter-
ested in this notorious man, and longed to meet him.

Unconscious of the insidious spell that was at work,
enchaining their two destinies, Sarah privately determined
to see this arrogant monster, this darling of the drawing-
rooms, this man who was called the handsomest being
since Apollo.

They met finally at the house of a friend who was
curious to see what they would do when brought together.

CHAPTER XXIV

THIS meeting of Sarah Bernhardt, then the greatest femi-
nine personality in Europe, and Damala, who was to be
the central figure of the most tragic episode of her life,
will remain in my memory for ever.

They were introduced by a mutual friend.

'"Damala?" said Sarah, raising her eyebrows, and
affecting an ignorance of his name which was in the cir-
cumstances really insulting.

"Bernhardt?" replied Damala, in similar accents.

It was flint on stone.

"Sir!" exclaimed the dismayed hostess, "you are ad-
dressing the greatest actress in France I"

"And I," said Damala, in a sceptically belittling man-
ner, "am therefore the greatest man in France I"

Bernhardt shrugged her shoulders at this insolence.

"You do not interest me, monsieur I" she said, turning
away.

"Wait," said Damala, "you have not heard all. I am
also the wickedest man in Paris."

"You sound to me," replied Sarah, "a fool, and the
poorest boaster I have ever met!" And she left him.

He laughed, and the laughter reached her. It struck
straight at her most vulnerable trait her vanity.

A man had laughed at Sarah Bernhardt! More, he
was laughing still! It was incredible 1

287

The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Yet it was so, and the memory of that laugh, and of
the passage of arms which had preceded it, lingered with
her. She was piqued. For the first time in her experi-
ence she had met a man who 'would not humble himself
before her.

Sarah was now negotiating for the purchase of the
Porte St. Martin theatre, which she proposed to place
under the direction of her young son, Maurice Bernhardt.
In this capacity, as a possible purchaser, she came face
to face with Damala, who had been waiting for her in
the theatre.

Sarah would have swept by him, but Ee stepped in
front*

"I have brought you a present!" he said, and held out
a bouquet of beautiful lilies-of-the-valley for it was
Springtime, the fete of muguet. This flower is supposed
in France to be a symbol of good fortune, and many a
forlorn lover makes up a quarrel with his sweetheart, on
the first of May, by presenting her with a tiny bundle
of muguet*

Sarah looked at him, astonished. Here was a new
Damala 1

But the Greek quickly disillusioned her.

"I give it to you," he said, "because you will need it
with me!"

This was even greater insolence than he had shown
before. Sarah was angry, mortified and interested.
Within a week she confounded her friends by accepting
an invitation to dine with Damala alone.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 289

Although his family in Athens had destined him for
the diplomatic service, his own private ambition was to
be an actor. As I have said, he was an amateur comedian
of no small merit, and when Sarah discovered this she
invited him to become a member of her company.

He accepted at once, but his family intervened and
a curious case of history repeating itself had him sent
on a diplomatic mission to Russia, whither young de
Lagrenee had gone a few years before.

Sarah was now all ready to depart on her Grand Tour
of Europe, during which she was to visit all the principal
capitals and was to give performances literally before "all
the crowned heads." In fact, many of those crowned
heads were destined before long seriously to feel her
powers of attraction,

She had already included in her itinerary Spain, Italy,
Austria, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and Nor-
way. It was an enormous undertaking, having regard
to difficulties of transport at that time, when the train
services in many countries were the worst imaginable. On
this tour, I was again included in her company.

When Damala went to Russia, he begged her to follow,
and as her itinerary included Denmark, it was not difficult
for her to arrange to go from there to Reval, and thence
to St. Petersburg. Russia had always possessed an enor,
mous attraction for her.

Voluminous descriptions of this tour have already been
given, and I shall not therefore say much about it, except
as regards Sarah personally.

290 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

In Lisbon, the actor Decori jumped into the first place
in Sarah's affections, and Decori was extremely jealous
of another actor named Dumeny, because he had a better
part in the piece.

During the rehearsals for L'Aveu, however, Decori
pretended to be a great friend of Dumeny's, and carried
him off every day on fishing trips. As a consequence,
Dumeny did not properly learn his part, and his per-
formance on the opening night was farcical.

Sarah called him into her dressing-room for an hour,
and gave him one of the most frightful reprimands I
have ever heard. It was devastating. When Dumeny
came out, he was pale and trembling like a leaf.

That night the company were the guests of the well-
known de Rosas at a formal banquet, and one of the hosts
proposed a toast to the French artistes.

Sarah sprang to her feet and pointed a shaking finger
at her unfortunate subordinate Dumeny, who was sitting
quietly at one end of the table with his wife.

"Ah, no!' 1 she cried, "I will not drink your toast if it
includes that pig there I When I play with him, I never
have any applause !"

There was a dead silence for a few moments, and then
Dumeny, very pale and with tears in his eyes, rose and
left the room, followed by his wife. We drank the toast

The next day Sarah bore down on Dumeny in the mid-
dle of rehearsals and exclaimed heartily: "Ah, my little
cabbage 1" and kissed him on the cheek!

In Madrid I was asked to play the part of Nanine in

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 291

La Dame aux Camillas. The Theatre de POpera at
Madrid is an immense building, and the area at the back
of the stage is a perfect wilderness of gangways, pas-
sages, and turnings between the different sets. It was
difficult even for the habitues of the theatre to find their
way about As for myself, I never did learn the quickest
way from one side of the stage to the other, when a
scene was being played. The distance seemed tremen-
dous, and one was always tripping over something.

I was supposed to make my exit by one door and to
re-appear at another one, where I was to knock and say
a certain line loudly I have forgotten the exact words.

I made my exit safely enough, but in running round to
the other door I lost my way, missed my cue, and, ren-
dered nervous at the prospect of Sarah's wrath, entered
without saying the line. As I did so, Sarah darted a
furious look at me, and I realised that she had already
explained my absence in such a way that my appearance
created a comic situation. The audience was laughing.

In the last act Sarah "died" and it was my duty to pass
a garment over her. This was the first time I had been
close to her since my faux pas of the third act.

Suddenly, as she 'sank with glazing eyes on her couch,
I was amazed to hear her launch into a perfect stream
of low-toned vituperation, directed at myself.

Her breast heaved, her breath came in short gasps.
Sarah Bernhardt was "dying" in one of the most mag-
nificent scenes she ever played. Her lips moved and

292 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

it is fortunate that the audience could not hear what they
said!

They said, in fact: "You ugly cow! You have spoiled
everything by your clumsiness ! This is not the proper
garment!"

And, in truth, I discovered to my horror that it wasn't I
I was in such a nervous state that I had chosen the wrong
robe. However, I am certain that nobody except Sarah,
not even the others in the company, noticed the fact
But, added to my previous grave fault, this error was
enough for her.

She kept up her great death scene, taking twice as long
as usual, because she kept on thinking of new reproaches
to hurl at me. What reproaches they were, too! My
ears burned. My cheeks were tingling with indignation.

Finally, when she uttered a really outrageous insult it
was with her supposedly last breath that she said it I
leaned down, and, making the motions of intense and
tearful grief, hissed between my sobs:

"You say another word and I'll smack your face here
on the stage!"

I meant it, too, and Sarah must have seen that I did,
for she "died" properly this time, and never pronounced
another word.

And all this while there was the audience out in the
mistiness beyond, tense and grief-stricken, held by the
marvellous acting of the great tragedienne on her stage
death-bed!

In Vienna the Archduke Frederick put one of his pal-

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 293

aces at Sarah's disposal, and in appreciation of his act
of courtesy we gave a special performance for him, to
which all the ladies of the Court were invited. The
Emperor was away, or ill I forget which.

The last act in La Dame aux Camelias r the very one
which I have just been describing, made such an impres-
sion on one of these ladies, a beautiful Hungarian, that
she fainted dead away and had to be carried out of the
theatre.

"Had I been a woman I would have fainted too I" said
the Archduke, when Sarah expressed her regret at the
occurrence.

He gave her an emerald pendant, set in natural gold
which had been obtained from a mine on his estate near
Bugany in Hungary. For a long time Sarah wore this
emerald more prominently than any other jewel. Finally
it went the way of most of her precious possessions*
Sarah gave out that it had been "lost." Perhaps it had
been, but I think I know the man who found it and who
paid Sarah handsomely for the privilege I

We were asked to play in Prague, but Sarah had re-
fused to go there, as she had refused to go to Berlin.
A few years later, in fact, she declined an offer of one
million marks to play in Berlin. "Never among those
swine I" she would say.

Eventually, however some sixteen years later I be-
lieve Sarah appeared in Berlin and secured triumph.
Germany, as I have stated in an earlier chapter, acclaimed
her as one of the Fatherland's own children.

294 THe Real SaraK Bernhardt

Finally, after returning to France through Switzerland,
we went to Holland, and from there to the Baltic states.
We played in Stockholm, Christiania and Copenhagen.
Our greatest reception was in Stockholm, where Sarah
became an idol of the people. I have always thought
that the Swedes understand dramatic art better than any
other nation except the French.

We passed through Finland, but did not play there.
Sarah was anxious to get to St. Petersburg, where a
grandiose demonstration and welcome, not to mention
Damala, awaited her.

Word came that the Tsar was to command a perform-
arice in the Winter Garden, and the whole company was
tremendously excited. None of us had ever seen the
Tsar. But so many stories had reached us about him
that, in our imaginations, he had become a sort of god.
Tales of the munificence of his entertainments, the sump-
tuousness of his Court, the power that he wielded, had
combined to weave about his person a truly romantic
glamour. And we were to play before this mighty per-
sonage !

But Sarah was not thrilled at least, not in anticipation
of playing before the Tsar. She might have been, and
probably was, thrilled at the prospect of again meeting
Damala, the one man who had met and vanquished her
with her own weapons.

And, when we actually saw the Great White Tsar, we
felt the edge taken off our thrill, too. He was the most
insignificant looking monarch in all Europe I

CHAPTER XXV

WE made our entry into St. Petersburg under the most
propitious conditions. The sun was smiling, and the
effect on the towers, domes and spires of Russia's won-
derful city was indescribably lovely. The Nevski Pros-
pekt was a never-to-be-forgotten sight; with its splendid
shops, its magnificent palaces, and its succession of fash-
ionable people in their smart turnouts.

Rooms had been reserved for us at the Hotel du Nord,
but on arriving there we found that it had not sufficient
accommodation for all of us, so a part of the company,
amongst them myself, went on to the European.

Being extremely tired after the long journey, I went
straight to my room to get some sleep, though it was
only four o'clock in the afternoon. I was awakened by
a knock on the door. I lit the gas, and found that the
clock said midnight. Who could be knocking on the. door
at that unearthly hour?

It was a maid, with a message from Hugette Duflos,
one of the women members of the company, who had
remained at the Hotel du Nord.

"Sarah is ill and wants you," the message said.

I dressed at once, and asked the maid whether a con-
veyance could be found to take a very young girl in safety
through the streets at night. The maid laughed.

295

296 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

"Oh, yes!" she answered. "Evidently madame is not
acquainted with our customs! This is tea-time I"

"Tea-time I" At midnight! T must have looked in-
credulous, for the maid went on to explain :

"Fashionable people do not rise until twelve o'clock
in St. Petersburg, and the shops and restaurants there-
fore keep open very late. When you are having your
supper in Paris, we in Russia are taking our tea I"

Going out into the brilliantly-lighted streets I saw that
she was right They were alive with people, and most,
if not all, the shops and of course the restaurants were
open., It was a novel scene that amused and enchanted
me.

We arrived in a few minutes at the Hotel du Nord,
and there another surprise awaited me. Sarah Bern-
hardt herself, accompanied by none other than Jacques
Damala, advanced to meet me. Right and left were
other members of the company, arriving in a similar state
of bewilderment

"We are going to have a real Russian party I" an-
nounced Sarah.

"But I thought you were ill?" I said.

"Just an excuse to get you out of bed, ma -petite!"
she said, to my astonishment "I knew all of you were
so tired that you would never get up for a mere invi-
tation to a party, so I invented the excuse that I was ill!"

Some of the party, especially the men, were very
angry and returned to their beds, after telling Sarah what
they thought of her. Sarah only laughed. I myself felt

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 297

nervous and annoyed, and Sarah must have seen this, for
she passed her arm round me and led me to a buffet, where
she gave me a little hot tea with cognac and lemon in it.
This warmed and strengthened me, and I decided to stay.

The party kept on till four o'clock, with Sarah and
Damala behaving like two children in their teens. There
was a fearfully fascinating Prince there Dimitri some-
thing, his name was and he devoted himself to me, as
the youngest and therefore the most innocent of the party.
I was sixteen or seventeen I forget which. At any rate,
it was all perfectly wonderful to me.

People kept arriving and departing as casually as they
had come. All St. Petersburg seemed determined to
make the acquaintance of Sarah Bernhardt, and the
throng round her was tremendous, with the result that
many who wanted to talk to her had to content them-
selves with the other members of the company.

My Prince was courtesy itself. He was quite young,
and very distinguished-looking; and I heard it stated that
he was related to the Royal family. But I never found
out the exact relationship ... in fact, Russia was such
a whirl for me that I carried away very few facts and
decidedly mixed impressions. Everyone was charming.

We were feted night after night in the most gorgeous
way. The Grand Duke Michael I think it was he r
opened up his palace, which looked like a fortress, to us
one night and we gave a brief performance there. After
that we danced. Several of the Grand Dukes were there,
and so was my Prince, who presented me to his wife, a

298 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

gracious lady with that air of innate breeding which only
the Russians, the English and the Danes seem to possess.
The fact that Prince Dimitri had his wife there did not
prevent his paying attention to me, and I had a wonder-
ful time. I could have stayed in Russia for ever.

We did not play in the Winter Palace, but gave a gala
performance for their Imperial Majesties at the National
Theatre. It was private, in that no seats were sold and
could be obtained only through invitations sent out by
the Court Chamberlain; but when we saw the vast throng
crowding the theatre it looked as if all Russia was there.
And all wealthy and titled Russia probably was, for we
heard that special trains had been made up to bring
"Sarah Bernhardt sightseers" from Moscow and other
famous cities. We were not to visit Moscow on this trip.

I have heard many people say that anyone who has
visited Russia can talk of nothing else and always longs
to return there. I can testify that this is true in my case ;
and I know also that it was true in the case of Sarah
Bernhardt who returned to Russia three times and always
spoke of the land of the Tsars with the warmest affection
and feeling.

I remember a gracious remark made by the Empress,
a woman of no great stature and with evident marks of
trouble on her sweet and modest face. When Sarah was
presented and dropped her curtsey before her, she said:

"I think, my dear, that I should be the one to bow !"

I thought it one of the most exquisite tributes I had
ever heard.

Sarah Bernhardt in Adrienne Lecouvreur,

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 299

We played Frangbis Coppee's Le Passant, La Dame
aux Camillas, Hernani, and L'Aventuriere. The Em-
peror chose Le Passant for the Command Performance,
and Sarah greatly appreciated his choice.

"He must be a poet himself! He looks like one!" she
said.

This observation came to the Emperor's ears, and after
the Command Performance was over he came down from
his box on to the stage and shook hands with Sarah
warmly.

"You are the most wonderful actress we have ever
seen in Russia, mademoiselle!" he said, "and one does
not need to be a poet to appreciate you I"

Alexander II presented her with a magnificent brooch,
set with diamonds and emeralds, as a remembrance of
the occasion. She "lost" it on one of her trips to South
America.

What jewels that woman lost or sold! The total
would have staggered belief, had it ever become known.
I suppose no actress ever possessed, at varying times,
such wonderful jewels as did Sarah Bernhardt. Yet when
her collection of gems was sold by auction in Paris after
her death, most of the articles were found to be paste,
and the whole collection fetched only a few thousand
francs, and that chiefly for sentimental reasons.

Damala and Sarah were seen together everywhere.
He took her about, introduced her into that class of
society to which he belonged by virtue of his official posi-
tion, and seemed wildly infatuated with her. Whether

300 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

it was really infatuation, or simply the desire to capture
the love and be seen in the company of the most famous
woman of her epoch, I shall leave to my readers to judge.

To me Damala was the most cold-blooded, cynical and
worthless individual whom I had ever met I could not
bear the sight of him. His very touch revolted me. And
my feelings were shared by most of the company, so that
when Sarah casually announced one day that Damala had
resigned his official position in order to join her company,
we were all more indignant than astonished. It had been
evident from the first that he meant leaving St. Peters-
burg when she did.

What Sarah saw in him I am at a loss to imagine. He
was still extremely handsome "beautiful" would be a
better description. He affected extreme dandyism in
dress, and was eccentric in many of his habits.

He was still coolly nonchalant in his dealings with
Sarah and in this he was wise, for it was this cynical
attitude of his, this disdain of her greatness and success,
wEIch had first attracted her to him and which continued
to hold her interest and pique her curiosity.

Once get a woman curious about a man, to the extent
of wishing to seek his company, and the rest follows as
night the day. . . .

To other people, Damala would praise Sarah wildly.

"She is the sun, the moon and the stars!" he would
exclaim. "She is Queen of the World ! She is divine I"

Sometimes these verbal extravagances reached Sarah's
ears, but she never believed he had uttered them! This

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 3*

was comprehensible enough, for when he was with her his
attitude was as different as possible.

On some occasions he actually treated her as an in-
ferior! He would criticise her dress, her manner of
doing her hair, her acting, her views on any subject, her
deportment, her speech. He was always finding fault
with her, and Sarah would fly into the most frightful rages
when he carried his sarcasms too far.

A hundred times she would cast him from her, with
stormy admonitions never to come near her again, a hun-
dred times she declared violently that she could not bear
the sight of him, despised him, and refused to take such
treatment from anybody, let alone a "Greek Gypsy."
This was her pet piece of invective, for, as she was aware,
it had the merit of piercing Damala's thick hide. As a
matter of fact, Damala was every inch an aristocrat, even
though he was a particularly degenerate one.

In reply to these wild outbreaks on Sarah's part,
Damala would adopt a peculiarly irritating attitude. He
would take her at her word, leave her, and then send a
note to the effect that he was glad to have rid himself
at last of such an incubus I

Then he would stay away from her until she came to
him and begged to be forgiven. That was what he wished
and liked; that was the pleasure his liaison with Sarah
Bernhardt gave him the idea of a proud and beautiful
creature, idolised by two continents, crawling to him,
Damala, on her knees, for forgiveness!

He would let people know about it, too.

302 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

"I had my proud Sarah on her knees last night," he
would say, "but I refused to forgive her; she has not yet
been punished enough!"

What a brute the man was but how well he knew
women !

The worse he treated her, the more she became his
slave. The more sarcastic he became, the humbler was
she. It had from the first been a struggle between two
arrogant natures, and Damala had won for the time
being. There came a day, however, when his victory
seemed empty enough.

St. Petersburg talked much of Sarah's affair with
Damala, as may be supposed. The two were so open
about It. The Court, and the gentle little Empress, were
shocked* There were no more command performances.
Russian high society was beginning to look askance at
this beautiful genius, who was so scornful of convention.

The code in Russia was that a man could do what he
liked. If his rank was high enough, he could commit
murder without losing caste. But a woman had to walk
within a strictly defined circle, which was drawn by the
Empress herself. Once she stepped beyond that circle
she could never get a footing inside it again. Sarah had
stepped outside, and she did not care.

Soon after this we left St. Petersburg, but not before
an incident occurred which will bear relating, even though
Sarah was not directly concerned in it.

We were playing one night when, during the third

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 303

entfacte, I received a message from a call-boy who
looked very awed and yet very important.

"The Grand Duke V desires that you will go to

his box," was the message.

Grand Dukes counted for little in my life and I, a
Republican to the backbone, was vexed at the peremptory
fashion in which the request was framed.

4 Tell His Imperial Highness that I am not in the habit
of going to private boxes during a performance!" I said.

The boy looked a little startled, but took my reply.
In a few minutes he was back.

This time there was no mistaking the character of the
message.

"His Imperial Highness presents his compliments to
Mademoiselle Therese, and wishes to inform her that he
will await her for supper, after the performance."

In consternation I went to see Sarah.

"What shall I do?" I asked. "I can't go to supper
with the manl"

"Tell him to go away, then!" suggested Sarah, who
had not taken much interest in my story. But another
member of the company, who knew Russia well, held up
his hands in horror.

"You can't do that it would be disobeying a Royal
command!" he exclaimed. "When a Grand Duke puts
a message in that form, it admits of but one reply. You
will have to go to supper with him!"

"I won't!" I replied, obstinately decided.

"Then you TVjitt be thrown into prison!"

304 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

"What! Thrown into prison because I refuse to sup
with a Grand Duke? What a ridiculous ideal"

"It's true, none the less. These men wield an enor-
mous power. A mere word from them, and you would
disappear and never be heard of again, and Grand Duke

V is the worst of the lot. You must remember that

this is Russia! 71

I was now terribly frightened. I looked for Sarah
again, but she had disappeared.

"What shall I do?" I inquired of Pierre Berton, who
had always been most kind to me.

"I will go to His Highness and tell him you are ill,"
he suggested. But I would not hear of Pierre getting
himself into trouble over me.

So, after the performance, I waited in fear and trem-
bling in my dressing-room. Several other members of
the company were there also, curious and disturbed as to
the outcome, while Pierre Berton had a positively fero-
cious expression on his face. He looked as though he
would like to eat all the Grand Dukes in Russia.

This was the first intimation I had had regarding the
true state of Berton' s feelings towards me. His declara-
tion of love and our marriage did not come until years
later.

Finally the Grand Duke came in. He was in full eve-
ning dress, and when seen near at hand appeared a most
amiable gentleman.

He bowed to the company, and when one of the ladies
dropped a curtsey, his eyes twinkled. I was thoroughly

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 35

frightened, but when he held out his arm to me, I stepped
forward in spite of myself. He was so thoroughly cour-
teous! Berton blurted out something indistinguishable,
but fortunately did not interfere. I went out with my
Grand Duke.

Well, the story has not the ending the reader may have
been led to expect. The supper was a gay one, but all
the men present behaved themselves quite properly and
the Grand Duke was more like a father to me than a
lover. Afterwards, he took me for a ride in his open
barouche, and then accompanied me home.

At the hotel, when they saw who had brought me back,
they received me with open mouths. It was the Hotel
Demouth, a little place but very smart, opposite the
statue of Catherine the Great. I had moved there be-
cause the European was too noisy.

The manager himself escorted me upstairs to my room
and bowed me in. I had become a personage !

I told Sarah about it the next day, and she compli-
mented me.

"However," she said, "nothing would have happened
to you if you had not gone! That same Grand Duke
wanted me to dine with him tHe other night, and I said
I would if I could bring Damala, and that finished it!"

CHAPTER XXVI

OF all the tragic episodes that abounded in the life of
Sarah Bernhardt, her marriage was probably the most
tragic.

The one man whom she adored sufficiently to marry
betrayed her love, made her a ridiculous spectacle in the
eyes of her theatrical comrades, ill-treated her to the
extent of actual cruelty, and, after spoiling her life for
seven years, died a victim of morphine.

Nobody knows what caused their decision to marry.
I know only one thing, namely, that not a member of the
company was aware of their intention until a few hours
before the actual ceremony; and then only Pierre Berton,
Jeanne Bernhardt, Mary Jullien, and Madame Devoyod
were let into the secret.

I was taken ill on the voyage home from Russia and
Sarah thought it best for me to return to France. Thus
I did not go on to London with the company, and joined
it only when it returned through Paris, on its way to
Italy.

What I know of Sarah Bernhardt' s marriage is there-
fore hearsay only what Pierre Berton told me. The
event must have made him miserable, poor man ! I am
sure he adored Sarah still, although weary of her caprices.

Berton was a very conscientious and honourable man ;

306

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 37

and his was the restraining influence in the Bernhardt
company, whereby many pitfalls were avoided owing to
his sage counsel. Sarah Bernhardt's once tender feeling
for him had changed into one of extreme respect. She
recognised the power of his intellect and admired his
wisdom, and never forsook him, both because he was a
marvellous actor of great drawing power and because he
was a counter-balance in the scales to outweigh her ruin-
ous escapades.

A great many of the company, having very good reason
to hate Damala, desired to leave at once, when Sarah
married him; and it was Pierre Berton who persuaded
them to stay on in order to support Sarah in the trials
which he knew she would shortly have to endure.

Sarah and Damala may have decided to marry during
the voyage from Russia ; but knowing them both as I did,
I am inclined to believe the thing was arranged on the
spur of the moment.

One could and can do such things in London. They
are impossible in Paris, where the consent of parents is
obligatory, even in the case of those who are no longer
minors, and where at least a month is always consumed
in absurd preliminaries and red tape.

I firmly believe that, had it been necessary for Sarah
to get married in France, she would never have done itl
Such a decision, in her case, required to be made and
carried out practically on the spot, while she was under
the influence of one of her fantastic moods. Marriage
to her, I aiU;Sure, was not the solemn, semi-religious event

308 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

that it is in the lives of most women. For her it was
merely another escapade the crowning one, if you like.

Almost everything else on the list of follies she had
committed. Why not marriage?

That, at any rate, is the opinion I have always held.
But Berton had a graver conception of the matter.

In his view Sarah was so tremendously infatuated by
Damala that she married him to make him wholly hers.
He used to say:

"She lived in constant terror that Damala's fancy
would change, that some other woman would cross his
path, and that he would leave her.

"She was completely under the fellow's domination.
If any good man, of high and noble principles, had offered
Sarah his name, she would have refused him scornfully;
she would have answered that she would tie her life to
no man's.

"But with Damala it was another matter. It was she
who desired passionately to hold him not the reverse.
At least, such is my belief. Sarah, too, when she remem-
bered how easily she had fallen a victim to it herself,
was often much perturbed at seeing how quickly women
were captured by Damala's fatal charm.

"She could think of no way to bind him to her except
by marriage. So, despite her distaste for the orthodox
union, she determined on the ceremony.

"She waited until we got to London, where such things
can be done over-night, and then took advantage of one
of Damala's affectionate spells to persuade him to marrv

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 39

her. He agreed; a priest was sent for, and they were
married all in the space of a few hours."

Damala always declared this version to be true that
it was Sarah who proposed to him and not he to her.
Moreover, in fits of temper, he would tell her so before
the whole company.

"If I had not been crazy I would not have been caught
so easily 1" he would cry, beating the air with his arms.

By marrying Damala, Sarah thought to bind him to
her. It was the supreme mistake of her life. Instead of
keeping him, she lost him.

She simply exchanged a lover for a husband, and many
women have found to their cost what that means. Sarah's
disillusionment came only three weeks later.

Until the marriage, Damala had been more or less
faithful to Sarah as faithful as a nature like his allowed.
But he had scarcely stepped down from the altar with his
bride, than he began betraying her right and left.

He demanded that she should change her stage name
to "Sarah Damala" in his honour, and when she refused
he walked out of the house and disappeared.

Performances had to be abandoned during the three
days he was away. Sarah was absolutely frantic. She
was ready to believe anything that he had deserted her
for good, that he had fallen into the Thames, that he had
run away to France, that he had committed suicide, that
he had gone away with another woman.

This last theory and Sarah would rather have lost
an arm than that it should have been found true was

3*0 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

the correct one. Damala, previous to his marriage and
unknown to Sarah, had struck up a friendship with a
Norwegian girl whom he had met on board ship. It was
with her that he spent those three days, scarcely a week
after his marriage to Sarah.

Paris, which had gasped at the news of the wedding,
was in spasms of mirth at this new unhappiness which
had overtaken Sarah. It so perfectly agreed with what
everyone had predicted.

"She is mad!" said Auguste Dane, the writer, when
he heard of the marriage through a letter that Berton
wrote to me. "He will leave her within a week!"

I remember the words so well, because they so nearly
came true.

In a few days Damala returned, tp find Sarah ill from
anxiety and bruised pride. God knows what his excuses
were, what methods he took to win his pardon ! A woman
in love is ever ready to believe, and Sarah was no ex-
ception.

The next day they were together again as usual.

The company went to Ostend, where it played five
nights. On the last night Damala disappeared again,
and was heard from two days later in Brussels, whither
he had gone with a pretty Belgian acquaintance.

He rejoined Sarah in Paris, and Sarah forgave him
again. He would pretend to be ill and win her pity; and
once pity takes the place of resentment in a woman's
Heart it is not difficult for a clever man to obtain every-
thing he wishes.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 3"

With every month of their married life, Damala's be-
haviour deteriorated. It began to be said of him that he
was the most unfaithful husband in all France, which was
saying a good deal.

"I saw Damala at the theatre last night," somebody
would say.

"With Sarah?"

"Sarah? No, of course not, imbecile I Sarah is now
his wife!"

And so it went on.

Accustomed to facile successes with women, Damala
carried his infidelities to extremes. In almost every town
they visited there was a new betrayal to register; and
Damala now scarcely took the trouble to conceal his
double life from Sarah.

One can imagine the mortification all this caused to.
such a proud nature as hers.

From being the idol of two hemispheres she was fast
becoming (as she knew well) the laughing-stock of
France ; and the sole reason for her misfortunes was her
insane action in marrying a man who did not understand
even the first principles of honour. In place of a ring he
had given her a cross to bear ; and the cross was the con-
descending amusement of the multitudes- who, a few
months previously, had been ready to fall down and wor-
ship her as a demi-goddess.

"She cannot be much, after all," said the man in the
street. "See, her husband betrays her right before her
eyes!"

312 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

"All those stories about her must have been true!"
thought the staid and virtuous members of society.
"Even her husband cannot live with her for more than a
month!"

The cruellest fact about mob-psychology is that a mob
is invariably ready to believe the worst The Parisians
now discovered with intense satisfaction that their idol's
feet were made of clay.

"Cest le ridicule qui tue" declared a great French
essayist. Ridicule was killing Sarah.

Never before had I seen Sarah Bernhardt suffer so
fearfully from the ravages of jealousy, nor did she ever
suffer so again.

Her face, within a few short months, lost that girlish
look which had been its greatest charm. Lines came to
features that had previously been clear of them. She
became dispirited; could not be consoled; would sit for
hours by herself; seemed to take little interest in what
was going on about her.

Then Damala would return, like a truant schoolboy;
and, after the usual scene of anger, all would be well
until the next time.

"Tu es folle II faut prendre ton parti!" ("You are
foolish you should make up your mind to make the best
of itl") I told her repeatedly.

One day at Genoa, Damala and an actress, whom
Sarah had dismissed on suspicion of a liaison with her
husband, left the company and went to Monte Carlo.

Sarah was seized with a frantic fit of jealousy, stopped

(Photo, Henri Manuel)

Sarah Bernhardt in Les Bouffons, 1906.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 3 r 3

all performances (in spite of the tremendous loss this
occasioned her) ; and wrote letters every hour pleading
with Damala to return.

The only reply he made to these overtures was a curt
note in which he informed her that he had lost 80,000
francs gambling at baccarat, and that if she would send
him this money he would come back at once.

Sarah sent the enormous sum and Damala kept his
word. He returned but still with the actress I

There was a tremendous scene in the lobby of the
Genoese hotel where we were staying. Sarah's rage was
directed against the woman. She ranted against her,
threatened her with everything from physical violence to
criminal proceedings, and ended by ordering her out of
the hotel.

"She has come back for the money you owe her I" said
Damala.

C'etait le comble! Sarah went straight into hysterics.
But when she recovered the woman was still there, and,
moreover, had a legal claim on her for her wages, so that
Sarah was forced to pay.

After this incident she had a respite from matrimonial
storms for several weeks. Her world revolved in and
about Damala, whom (at his own request) she created
managing-director of the company, with his name, as
such, billed in large type everywhere.

This request of Damala's was his undoing. It opened
Sarah's eyes as nothing else could have done to the real
worthlessness of the man she had made her husband.

314 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Damala she knew to be congeni tally unfaithful, but her
pride could not endure the further discovery that she had
married an incompetent.

As manager of a theatrical company on tour he was
a miserable failure. He wasted thousands of francs, be-
came tangled in his accounts, could not handle other
people, had no genius whatever for organisation. Had
it not been for their affection for Sarah, the members of
the company would have voted that it should be dis-
banded.

Foolish .contracts were made with theatres in strange
towns, hotel arrangements omitted, trains missed, prop-
erties lost all those incidents occurred which indicate
bad management and which demoralise a company.

To avoid a crash, Sarah allowed her business sense to
dominate her other feelings, and there was a welcome
return of her old authoritative character. We greeted
with enthusiasm her domineering ways in place of
Damala's blundering and bullying incompetency.

From Head of the Company, Damala became a mere
Prince Consort.

There was a disgraceful scene when she made her
decision known to him. He called her horrible names
"long-nosed Jewess" was one of the milder ones.

Then, characteristically, he had his revenge by making
open love to one of Sarah's lesser rivals.

"If a man quit me for a Queen," said Lady Dudley,
in the days of Elizabeth, "then I will be proud, for it will
have taken the Queen to tear him from me; but if a man

The Real Sarah Bernhardt

quit me for a Duchess, then am I like to die of shame."

Damala had quit his Queen for a Duchess, and Sarah
was "like to die of shame"; but she cured herself by
writing Damala a letter, telling him never to return.

Damala did return the next day, however, "and in
Sarah's absence carried off several articles of considerable
value belonging to her. This happened in Paris after he
had played with her in a piece at the Porte St. Martin
theatre, which she had just purchased.

Damala then returned to his abandoned diplomatic
career, but his habits soon forced him to give up active
work.

Despite the fact that she had been born a Jewess and
was only baptised into the Catholic faith, Sarah had
strict ideas of a sort about religion. She refused to
divorce Damala, contenting herself with a semi-legal
separation whereby, in return for certain sums she sent
to him monthly, he agreed never to re-enter her life.

Five years later, however, Damala sent a message to
Sarah saying that he was dying in Marseilles and im-
ploring her to forgive him and take him back.

The strength of the love which she must once have
borne him is shown by the fact that, immediately she
received this message, she abandoned her performances
in Paris, rushed to the bedside of her husband whom
she found wasted from disease and drugs and nursed
him back again into some semblance of health,

Damala promised to leave morphine alone and they
went on tour together; but the drug, to which Jeanne

316 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Bernhardt had already succumbed, proved too strong for
him.

Once, at Milan, he was nearly arrested for exhibiting
himself naked at the Hotel de Ville (which is an hotel
and not a town hall). His body was a mass of sores
occasioned by the drug.

I was a member of the company on the famous tour
Sarah made with Damala in Turkey. We played in
Constantinople and Smyrna, and on taking the boat for
Cairo we ran into a terrible storm.

Three times we tried to get into the Bay of Alexandria,
and each time failed. Finally the ship was anchored until
calmer weather came. Sarah was violently sick, and, on
recovering, asked the steward to bring her the delicacies
she had had brought on board for her own special use
at table.

These delicacies included several cases of champagne
and others of fruit and pate de foie gras, of which Sarah
was particularly fond.

Imagine her fury when the steward returned with the
information that Damala had eaten all the fruit and bad
consumed all the champagne, and that nothing was left
for Sarah except the regular rough fare of the steamer.

Shortly before his death, Damala was given a part by
Sarah in the play Lena, at the Theatre des Varietes.
During the second performance he was so drunk that he
could not say a word.

A few weeks later he died. Sarah was with him until
the last This was in 1889.

CHAPTER XXVII

EXCEPT that those seven fearful years left their inevitable
traces upon her appearance and mind, Sarah's imprudent
marriage had wonderfully little effect upon her after life.

Moreover, she never renounced the name of Damala,
which remained her legal name until she died, though few
people knew it.

During the war the fact that she was legally a Greek
caused her much annoyance, and once when there was a
danger that King Constantine might throw his country
into the war on the side of the Germans, she saw herself
actually refused a visa to her passport by an officious
nobody in a consular office at Bordeaux.

"But I am Sarah Bernhardt, sir!" she exclaimed.

"My orders are not to grant visas to Greeks," said the
official stolidly. "This passport is a Greek one and I
will not endorse it."

It required a special telegram from the Minister of
the Interior himself before the obstinate clerk could be
persuaded to change his mind.

Sarah wore mourning for Damala for a year, but his
death did not put a stop to her theatrical activities. If
anything, she cast herself into her work with more eager-
ness than ever.

The seven years of her marriage with Damala had been

317

The Real Sarah Bernhardt

distinguished by Sarah's first essay in theatrical manage-
ment. Towards the end of 1882 she acquired the lessee-
ship of the Ambigu Theatre the play-house where, fif-
teen years earlier, she had been refused a part by Chilly.
It was announced that her son, Maurice Bernhardt, was
to be manager.

It is doubtful whether Maurice ever did any active
management. He had little aptitude for such work, and
Sarah was the supervising genius both at the Ambigu and
the other theatres which she subsequently acquired.

It was at the Ambigu that Sarah launched Jean
Richepin. She mounted his play La Glu y which obtained
an enormous success. She also played Les Meres Enne-
mies, by Catulle Mendes.

Exactly on what occasion Sarah Bernhardt and Jean
Richepin were brought together I cannot say. I think
they had known each other for a considerable period be-
fore their real association began. Sarah was much at-
tracted to Richepin, who had a temperament very similar
to hers by all accounts.

Richepin' s life had been almost as fantastically varied
and adventurous as Sarah's own. He had been born of
rich and influential parents, and educated at the Paris
Normal School, an institution of considerable importance.

He gave many evidences of precocity during his school-
days, and, after graduating, scandalised his former teach-
ers and schoolmates by impertinently opening up a fried-
potato stand just outside the school gates. It was a way
of expressing his individuality and his scorn of pedantries.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 3*9

After that he became a vagabond, journeying through
the provinces of France on foot, sometimes begging his
bread and sometimes working at odd trades for it.

Of an extreme suppleness of body and delighting in
acrobatics, he finally obtained a job in a travelling cir-
cus, where he was destined to meet the woman whom he
afterwards made his first wife.

From then on he became an actor, unattached to any
particular theatre at first, but gradually taking parts of
increasing importance until he wrote Nana Sahib, in
which he played with Sarah Bernhardt. This play laid
the real foundations of a fortune and celebrity which
to-day are both considerable.

While they were playing together In Nana Sahib,
Sarah's great rival on the stage was Marie Colombier,
the friend of the author Bonnetain.

The whole city was divided into two camps, the Bern-
hardt camp and the Colombier camp, and there was tre-
mendous venom displayed on both sides.

Performances at the theatre in which Marie Colombier
was playing would be enlivened by bands of "Sarado-
teurs," who, taking possession of the galleries, would hoot
and hiss and whistle until the curtain was rung down.

The next night there would be, as like as not, a similar
scene in Sarah's theatre, and often the police would be
obliged to interfere to prevent a battle royal between the
opposing factions.

Two-thirds of the contents of Sarah's letter-bag con-

320 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

sisted of flowers and presents ; the other third of insult-
ing anonymous letters.

A score of times Richepin offered to challenge Bonne-
tain to a duel on Sarah's behalf, but was dissuaded from
doing so.

Finally Bonnetain wrote a book about Sarah, which was
signed by Marie Colombier and entitled "Sarah Bar-
num." Barnum and Bailey's Circus was then the great-
est attraction of Europe.

None of the names in the book were real, of course,
but they were so cleverly disguised that everyone in Paris
knew for whom they were intended, though any proof
might be impossible.

Sarah had no remedy in the courts, so she took her
revenge in another way. She and Jean Richepin at
least, the way in which the book was written certainly
greatly resembled Richepin's well-known style wrote
and published a volume in reply which was entitled
"Marie Pigeonnier," and in which exactly the same tac-
tics were followed.

The two books convulsed Paris and the several editions
were quickly exhausted. Sarah's friends bought up
"Sarah Barnum," and Marie Colombier's friends pur-
chased all they could find of "Marie Pigeonnier," Sarah
herself spent 10,000 francs in buying up every copy of
the "Sarah Barnum" book she could lay hands on.

A few copies escaped, however, and these can be found
in certain Paris libraries to-day.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 321

They were really very clever books, beautifully written
and full of very effective satire.

Marie Colombier, in "Sarah Barnum," accused Sarah
of drinking too much whisky, and Sarah Bernhardt re-
torted by asserting that Marie Pigeonnier delighted in
absinthe. It was an amusing although scarcely polite
controversy !

Jean Richepin is now one of the great and respected
men of France. His romantic youth is almost forgotten
in the eminent respectability of his age. He is probably
France's most prolific classic author, and though he quar-
relled bitterly with Sarah Bernhardt, his warm regard
for her persisted until her death.

Richepin is one of the most distinguished living mem-
bers of the Academic Frangaise and of the Instltut de
France. He is credited with having obtained for Sarah
Bernhardt the Legion of Honour, after a long discussion
as to whether an actress could be awarded a distinction
. which had hitherto been reserved for men.

Sarah soon abandoned the Ambigu to play at the
Vaudeville in Feodora, a play by Victorien Sardou. This
had been arranged before Sarah left for America. Ray-
mond Deslandes, director of the Vaudeville, paid her
1,500 francs sixty pounds per performance.

Later on, when Sarah took over the management of
the Porte St Martin, she made Duquesnel director, and
Sardou and Duquesnel wished her to launch Theodora,
another play by Sardou. Pierre Berton was against the

322 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

innovation, and urged that Feodora should again be
played. Sarah and Berton were now at daggers drawn.

"My compliments" (wrote Sardou to my husband at
this time). "You are right about Feodora-* that is
better than a new piece, which I know will be a failure.

"But why do you wish Sarah to play Feodora where
Gamier has no part? It is Sarah, which is to say Gar-
nier, who leads everything to-day in this lunatic asylum
of which Duquesnel thinks he is the director but of which
he is only a pensionnaire"

This Is an interesting revelation of Sarah's renewed
friendship for Gamier, whose place Damala had usurped
a few years previously.

Sardou's letters to my husband, never before published,
throw a light on the dealings of the great actress with
her dramatists.

Here is one showing Sarah's distaste for Berton's per-
sistent advice:

"MON CHER AMI,

"Je regois une lettre de Sarah, fulminante contre vous,
et qui n'a aucune raison d'etre. Je ne sais pas ce qu'elle
s'est figure et j'insiste sur le mot. Car je me suis borne
a dire a Grau que je vous avais vu, et (pie vous m'aviez
dit qu'elle allait jouer La Dame (La Dame aux

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 3 2 3

Camelias] decidement, et que vous jouiez Gaston rien
de plusl C'est ce que j'ecris a Sarah, en lui declarant
que sa colere est insensee en ce qui vous concerne.

"En meme temps je lui dis ce que je pense de la Dame
dans ces conditions, et de Duquesnel, qui la force a la
jouer et qui ne voit pas qu'en cela il nuit a tout le monde,
a Sarah, a moi, a Dumas -,// et a lui-meme."

After this Sardou had a long and stormy interview
with Sarah, urging her to play Theodora instead of La
Dame aux Camelias , on which she and Duquesnel had de-
cided. It ended in the great dramatist's defeat, and
while his anger was still hot he sat down and wrote to
Berton :

U MON CHER AMI,

"II n'y a rien a faire avec cette folle qui tue la poule
aux oeufs d'or. Je connais ses projects une Maria
PadilladeMailhac!!! Maria Padilla !! EtdeMeilhac!
Et une piece de Dumas! Elle n'aura ni Tune ni 1'autre,
et compte alors se rattraper sur Froufrou. Elle va
jouer Froufrou alors de septembre en mars!

"Elle est folle, et plus on veut la tirer de Taffaire plus
elle s'enfonce. Quant a moi j'en suis saoul et ne veux
plus entendre parler d'elle. Si vous avez quelque chose
d'utile a me dire, venez me voir dimanche vers quatre
heures, car je suis pris tous les autres jours. Demain je
vous aurais bien indique une heure a Paris, mais je

324 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

n'aurai pas un moment a moi, et samedi j'ai conseil

municipal.

"Poignee de main,

"V. SARDOU."

I give these letters in the original French, partly be-
cause they would lose greatly in translation, and partly
because they have never before been seen in print, and
are therefore an interesting contribution to the intimate
story of Sarah Bernhardt's life.

Some phrases in the above are worth noting: "Noth-
ing to be done with this idiot who is killing the goose that
lays the golden eggs"; "She is crazy, and the more one
tries to save her the deeper in she sinks" ; "As to me, I am
drunk of the whole affair and don't wish to hear her name
again!"

"Previous to the production, of Theodora Sardou wrote
to Berton :

"MON CHER AMI,

"II faudrait plusieurs pages comme celle-ci pour vous
mettre au courant des negotiations relatives a Theodora
et au mouvement tournant opere par Sarah. La encore
une fois Duquesnel a recueilii le fruit de son irresolution.
II fallait signer avec Grau le lendemain du jour ou il
m'avait dit que c'etait chose faite. Mais vous connaissez
Thomme. Pour ce que vous concerne ga a ete plus simple.
Sarah m'a declare qui si vous deviez jouer Andreas, elle
ne jouerait pas Theodora en tournee, et comme il avait

''*''''

Letter of Congratulation from Victorien Sardou.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 3*5

deja fortement question d'y renoncer, vu la certitude de
ne pas la jouer en Belgique et en Russie, la depense du
materiel a transporter etc., etc., la menace ne laissait pas
d'avoir un cote serieux. Cela pouvait se traduire pour
moi par une perte d'une vingtaine de mille francs; j'ai du
capituler, en exigeant toutefois que si vous jouez Justinien,
le tableau du iv acte, qui est a lui, fut maintenu, condition
formelle.

"II est bien entendu avec Bertrand qu'il vous engage
pour FEden, et nous avons, in petto, prevu le cas Andreas.
Faites-vous payer. C'est bien le moins qu'on vous
dedommage des sottes humiliations que vous infligent les
caprices de coeur de la grande artiste. J'espere que le
vent tournera, dans le cours de ces neuf mois, et que nous
verrons une fois encore Damala renvoye a 1'office. De
toute fagon, ne vous brouillez ni avec elle, ni avec Ber-
trand, en vue Tavenir. Mille bonnes amities.

"V. SARDOU."

The interesting thing about the above letter is, of
course, the proof that Sarah, during her disagreements
with Damala, went back to Berton, with whom she sub-
sequently quarrelled after her reconciliation with Damala.

The phrases which stand out are: "Sarah declares
that if you play Andreas she will refuse to play Theodora
on tour - . . which will mean a loss to me of 20,000
francs ... I was thus obliged to consent"; "Make her
pay you. It is the least return they can make for the low
humiliations which the caprices of heart of the great

326 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

artiste inflict on you." "By all means, do not break with
Sarah or with Bertrand, because of the future."

There came a day, however, after he had married me,
when Pierre Berton could no longer stand these humilia-
tions heaped on him by Sarah. He retired definitely
from the stage to devote himself to dramatisation, his
most successful play being Zaza, which was an enormous
success both in England and America.

CHAPTER XXVIII

DURING the rehearsals of Theodora at the Porte St.
Martin, Richepin invariably accompanied Sarah Bern-
hardt to the theatre. This enraged Victorien Sardou, for
it was then and has since remained a matter of unwritten
theatrical law that one dramatic author should not visit
the rehearsals of another's play.

Eventually Sardou made a scene one afternoon in the
office of Duquesnel, the manager. I happened to be pres-
ent, having had a previous appointment with Duquesnel.

Beside himself with anger at the slights she was con-
stantly heaping upon him, Sardou abused Sarah and
Richepin, coupling their names in language of consider-
able vigour.

Sarah, as it happened, was in an office next to that of
Duquesnel, and heard every word. Bounding forth, she
rushed into Duquesnel's. office and cried:

"I have heard all! You are animals and pigs!
Richepin is an etre delicieux! I will not remain in your
odious theatre another instant! I refuse to play this
pig's piece!" indicating Sardou, who was too much as-
tounded to say a word.

With that she flounced out of the theatre, leaving us
in doubt as to whether the play could continue.

3*7

328 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

On returning to her house, however, she was met by
her maid, who said to her :

"Monsieur Richepin has just been here and has taken
away his things. He has left madame a note."

Sarah tore open the note feverishly. A cry of min-
gled rage and despair escaped her. It was a note of
adieu I

Immediately Sarah sat down at her writing-table and
wrote to Sardou and to Duquesnel:

U MY DEAR FRIENDS,

"I have reflected, you are quite right; Richepin after
all is only the latest of these voyous whom I have put out
of my door. All shall be as you wish.

"SARAH."

It was only later that we learned from Richepin the
true story.

The one and only pantomime that Sarah Bernhardt
ever played in was Pierrot, Assassin, by Richepin.

This was a complete failure and only brought hisses
and cat-calls wherever it was produced, but Sarah insisted
on retaining it on her repertoire so that Richepin could
have the author's royalties. These were considerable,
for Sarah cannily would only produce the pantomime once
in each city, and her name alone was sufficient to fill the
theatre.

She took the thing all over Europe. When we were
in Scandinavia she would tell us that the play was not a

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 3*9

success because: 'These Northerners do not understand
the art of pantomime ; it is an art of the South ; you will
see how they will applaud us in the south of France 1"

But when we played in Montpellier, the students were
so indignant that they demolished the interior of the
theatre, and we had to steal out of the city in closed cabs
during the night in order to escape their wrath I

Since that day Pierrot, Assassin has not been played.

All this time she had kept up her friendship with most
of the people who had surrounded her during her years
at the Comedie Frangaise in the seventies, and among
these was Gustave Dore, the immortal illustrator of the
Bible and of Dante's "Inferno."

Her romance with Gustave Dore was one of the really
illuminating episodes of her life.

One night she was playing Clorinde, in L'Aventuriere.
Dore, who was in the audience, was so charmed that he
sent her the next day the original sketches he had made
for the Gospel of St. John, considered among his finest
work. In reply, she wrote to him and asked him to come
to her dressing-room after the performance.

When Dore came, he had scarcely opened the door
before she characteristically threw herself into his arms
and kissed him on both cheeks. Dore was so astounded
that, for a moment, he could not speak, This was the
first occasion on which he had seen Bernhardt at close
quarters, and in fact it was the first time he had ever
been behind the scenes of a theatre.

33 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

When Dore did not move nor speak, so great was his
astonishment, Sarah flew into a temper.

"Ah, you regret, you are sorry you sent me your pic-
tures 1" she stormed. "You despise me."

Dore threw himself at her feet, and kissed her satin
slippers.

"Madame," he said simply, "I do not permit myself
to love a being so far above me ; / adore!"

This was not the beginning of their romance, however,
for Sarah was then held in ties of intimacy with Georges
Clairin, Dore's friend.

But Dore joined Sarah's little intimate circle, and after
the death of Damala he ventured to reproach her for
abandoning her painting and sculpture.

"It is because I have no teacher," she said sadly. She
had quarrelled with Clairin, who had gone to live in the
Midi.

"Let me accompany you!" suggested Dore. "I cannot
teach you, but we will teach each other."

Less than a week later it was common gossip in Paris
that Gustave Dore and Sarah Bernhardt experienced a
tender passion for each other. It is questionable, how-
ever, whether this was not a passing passion with Sarah
although a very genuine one all the same.

Dore was a handsome man of singularly fine physique.
He was quiet, studious, and in his own field as famous as
Sarah in hers.

He used to work on exquisite miniatures of Sarah, sev-
eral of which are now to be found in private collections.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 33 1

Sarah and he spent one August sketching together in
Brittany. They both wore corduroy trousers and car-
ried easels, and people who did not know them took them
for an old painter and his apprentice, never dreaming
that the "apprentice" was the most famous actress in
France.

Sarah told me of an amusing incident that occurred
during this painting odyssey. They had been walking
all day, and dusk found them near a farmhouse. Enter-
ing, they asked for shelter for the night.

After dinner Dore was shown to a bedroom, and the
painter supposed that Sarah had been given another.
But the next morning, on looking out of the window, he
was amazed to see her washing herself at the yard pump,
her clothes full of straw and filth. She was in a merry
mood.

"They took me for your boy pupil, and gave me a bed
with the cow in the barn 1" she told him.

During the first twenty-five years of her career, Sarah
Bernhardt earned considerably more than 200,000.
Most of this was made after she left the Comedie Fran-
gaise to become her own manager. At the Porte St.
Martin, when she leased it, her profits were/^oo,QOO
francs annually.

But she made her largest sums on tour. Altogether
*she brought back from the United States alone consider-
ably more than six million dollars.

But she was one of the most extravagant women who
ever lived. She nearly always spent more than her in-

33 2 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

come, and, when she was in debt and besieged by credit-
ors (as often happened) she would organise another
Grand Tour of America, or Australia, or Brazil, or Eu-
rope anywhere that promised her sufficient money.

This was the real reason for her repeated tours, which
made her internationally famous.

She was still, despite the fact that she was advancing
towards middle age, wonderfully beautiful and full of
high spirits.

In fact, these high spirits sometimes translated them-
selves into practical jokes, the point of which we might
be pardoned sometimes for not seeing.

When I was a young girl, and none too rich," she saw
me with my shoes sodden from walking in the rain

"Let me put them to dry," she exclaimed, removing
them gently. Then, in a burst of her peculiar humour,
she threw them in the fire ! And I had to walk home in
my stockinged feet. She promised to buy me another
pair of shoes, but I am bound to say that she never did.

When Catulle Mendes gave Sarah the principal part
in Les Meres Ennemies, he was the friend of Augusta
Holmes, the celebrated composer. They were both poor,.,
and with his first profits from the piece Mendes bought
his friend a green cloth gown, with long sleeves and a
high collar.

When Sarah saw the gown she cried : "What I A fine
woman like you, to hide your arms and shoulders! How
ridiculous P !

And, seizing a pair of scissors, she cut ofi both sleeves

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 333

and sliced off the collar, while poor Augusta stood by,
terrified to death. The gown now had a square de-
collete, it was true, but it was completely ruined.

When a male friend came to see her, wearing a tall
hat, it was a delight to Sarah to throw it on the ground
and playfully dance upon it!

She was a trial to all who loved her, and she had tre-
mendous difficulty in keeping domestics. Despite this,
she finally established a household which remained with
her for most of her later years,

Her secretary was Piron, formerly of the Opera
Comique, who could play on almost any instrument Her
personal maid was Dominga, a Buenos Ayres dressmaker,
who threw up her business to follow Sarah. Her valet
was Antonio, a Tunisian Jew who spoke five languages
and who was discovered by Sarah in far-away Chili.
Her butler was Claude, and her dresser was Felicie.

It was during a performance of Jeanne d' Arc at the
Porte St. Martin, in 1890, a year after Damala's death,
that the accident, which eventually cost her her right leg,
happened to Sarah.

She injured the right knee in falling while on the stage,
and during the resultant illness, which was complicated
by phlebitis, there was much talk of amputation. (This
did not come until 1915, however, and for the time being
Sarah's limb was saved, thanks to the genius of the fa-
mous Doctor Lucas-Championniere.)

An American impresario then in Paris (I think it was

334 ! The Real Sarah Bernhardt

P. T. Barnum) went to Sarah and said that he had heard
her leg was to be cut off.

"I offer you 10,000 dollars for your limb for exhibition
purposes," was his astounding proposition.

Sarah's reply was to raise her skirts and to display
wistfully the member, which had shrunk a good deal
owing to the injury.

"I am afraid that you would lose on your bargain,"
she said. "Nobody would believe 'that that was the leg
of Sarah Bernhardt!"

In 1887 she made another Grand Tour of Europe, and
in the following year left for a tour of the United States
and Canada, which she repeated in 1889.

At the conclusion of this latter tour she took over the
Porte St. Martin, where she distinguished herself chiefly
in the roles of Jeanne d'Arc and Cleopatra.

In 1893 sKe acquired the management of the Renais-
sance Theatre, and in 1894 launched there another great
dramatist Jules Lemaitre, whose play, Les Rois, she
starred in herself, and in which she obtained a great tri-
umph.

Her friendship with Jules Lemaitre was one of the
most abiding and beautiful things in her life. It lasted
from those successful days at the Renaissance right up
to his death, which occurred only a few years before her
own.

She helped and encouraged him in his dramatic work,
appeared herself in several of his plays, and, in his de-

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 335

clining years, invited him for long months to Belle Isle,
her home on the shores of Brittany.

Jules Lemaitre was the one man with whom she never
quarrelled. His was such a perfect character, so sweet
a spirit, that a dispute with him would have been im-
possible.

And now Sarah was growing old herself, even though
her spirit was still young. When she produced Les Rois
she was just fifty years old.

It was perhaps because her friendship with Jules Le-
maitre was a spiritual association, rather than a love af-
fair, that it lasted so long. They adored each other,
but their mutual interest lay in their work together.

Never a play of Lemaitre's was produced or a criti-
cism of his published which Sarah did not see first; and
never a literary effort of Sarah's saw print without first
having been subjected to the kindly criticism of Jules
Lemaitre.

It was a beautiful chapter in both their lives, and the
last sentimental episode for each. For, after she became
fifty years old, Sarah Bernhardt became more and more
a worker, an apostle of energy, and less and less the
ardent lover.

Her affair with Edmond Rostand was the last great
affair of passion in the life of Sarah Bernhardt.

It merits a chapter to itself.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE first time Sarah Earnhardt's name was publicly
linked with that of Edmond Rostand was prior to the
production of UAiglon.

.Sarah still pursued her studies as a sculptress, though
not so assiduously as before. Sometimes a whole year
would go by without her putting chisel to stone, and
then she would have a burst of trenchant energy and work
furiously on a bust for days and nights together.

She was possessed of great determination, a trait
which is generally allied to obstinacy, and she was re-
markable among her friends for always finishing anything
she started. She might, in the fits of temper which now
were becoming rarer, break her sculptures or rip up her
paintings after she had finished them, but she invariably
completed them first.

She liked to have famous men to pose for her. She
seized on Victorien Sardou, a man of great irritability
as demonstrated by his letters reproduced in a previous
chapter and compelled the great dramatist to sit for
her twenty-one times, during which she completed her
famous bust of him in black marble. This is considered
by many to have been her finest work.

Occasionally, when people refused to sit for her or
pleaded various excuses, she would trick them into sub-

336

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 337

mission. This was the way she managed to get Edmond
Rostand and Maurice Maeterlinck to pose together.

Rostand and Maeterlinck were friends, and one night
they accepted an invitation to dine at the home of the

Countess de B , the occasion being in honour of the

President of the Republic.

Having some time to spare beforehand, the two men,
who were then not nearly so celebrated as Edmond
Rostand was when he died, or as Maeterlinck is now,
called upon Sarah Bernhardt. It was three o'clock in
the afternoon, and the Countess's, dinner was fixed for
nine o'clock at night

Nine o'clock came and passed, and then nine-thirty,
and finally 10 p.m.' The Countess gave orders, for the
dinner to be served, at the same time sending messengers
to the homes of the absentees, to inquire if there had
been any accident.

To her astonishment the messengers came back with
the news that nothing had been seen or heard of the two
poets since they had departed, shortly after lunch, to
take tea with Madame Sarah Bernhardt.

Containing her anger, the Countess returned to her
guests and explained that Rostand and Maeterlinck had
been unavoidably detained. Then she privately sent two
young guests to Sarah's house, with strict instructions not
to return without finding out whether the distinguished
and errant couple were still there.

They had no sooner reached the portals of Sarah's

338 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

home than the grille opened and out came Rostand and
Maeterlinck, in a great hurry.

"The Countess and the President of the Republic have
been waiting for you for three hours I" cried one of the
messengers.

It came out that, during their visit, Sarah had been
seized with one of her modelling fits and had persuaded
them to sit to her. When it was time for them to go,
she had enticed them into a room she called her studio,
which had glass doors, and turned the key on them there.

When they turned round they perceived Sarah sitting
on the other side of the transparent doors, calmly con-
tinuing her modelling.

They rapped on the door, made faces at her, shouted,
all to no purpose. Sarah went on working with her clay,
rounding the figures into shape.

"But the President is waiting for usl n cried Rostand
finally through the key-hole,

Sarah's "voice of gold" came sonorously through the
door:

"It is a far greater honour, messieurs, to be a prisoner
in Sarah Bernhardt' s hands, than to be a performing lion
for the President of France I"

Rostand's courtship of Sarah Bernhardt remained one
of the great episodes of his career. Though Sarah re-
fused him repeatedly, and he afterwards married the
famous Rosamonde, his friendship with the actress con-
tinued, and she was at once his inspiration and his mentor,
as well as the co-author of his fame.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 339

Sarah was the first woman invited to see little Maurice
Rostand on the day that he was born.

And when Sarah herself lay dying, Rosamonde and
this same boy Maurice were among the last to be ad-
mitted to her bed-chamber.

Rostand used to write Sarah frantic letters, pleading
his love for her. He sang her praises everywhere he
went, even in the cafes on the boulevards where he and
his fellow litterateurs were wont to gather.

"She is the Queen of Attitude, the Princess of Gesture,
the Lady of Energy," he exclaimed once, in a poem dedi-
cated to Sarah.

In 1896, after L'Aiglon was produced, he wrote:

"The existence of Sarah Bernhardt remains the su-
preme marvel of the nineteenth century."

As was the case in all her love affairs, except that with
Jules Lemaitre, her high-strung temperament clashed
frequently with that of Rostand, who was a wild and
erratic youth.

He was in the habit of meeting Sarah and supping with
her after the theatre. Sometimes they would go for
long drives together, Sarah sitting and listening atten-
tively, while Edmond declaimed his latest poems.

It was thus she heard for the first time the verse of
UAiglon, which he and she created. She would criticise
the dramatic construction of a play, and was no mean au-
thority on verse. Rostand admitted afterwards that he

340 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

owed everything to her shrewd coaching during those
midnight drives through the Champs Elysees and the
Bois de Boulogne.

Once he arrived at the stage door of the new Sarah
Bernhardt Theatre the old Opera Comique, which
Sarah had leased from the City of Paris five minutes
late. They had had something particularly important
to talk over in regard to a forthcoming production, and
Sarah could not brook delay.

She left him a short, imperious note stating that she
would not produce his play, since he took so little interest
in it, and, moreover, she did not wish to see him again I

The next morning, when Sarah left her house to take
her accustomed ride in the Bois, she discovered a haggard
figure sitting on the doorstep.

It was Rostand. He had stayed on the doorstep all
night, hoping by thus humbling himself to be forgiven.

Sarah was struck by his devotion, but more by the fact
that he was shivering with fever. She took him into the
house, and had him put to bed in her private apartment,
and for three days she ministered to him while he recov-
ered from a severe cold.

She would not allow a domestic to approach the bed-
room, even carrying Rostand his food and hot-water
bottles with her own hands. During these three days she
did not go near the theatre and nobody in Paris knew
where Rostand was I

It was during this sickness in Sarah's house that Ros-
tand conceived (as he admitted afterwards) the first

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 34*

idea for L'Aiglon, which he composed for and dedicated
to Sarah. L'Aiglon, as everyone knows, is the story of
the King of Rome, Napoleon's son, who dies in exile.

It had a moderate success when Sarah first produced it
in her own theatre at Paris, but was an absolute triumph
in London and New York. In the play Sarah takes the
part of the young King of Rome.

To me she once said: "L'Aiglon is my favourite part.
I think I like it better than Tosca. At any rate, a poet
wrote it with me in mind."

"So did Frangois Coppee write Le Passant, with you
in mind!" I reminded her.

Sarah was wistful. "Yes, that is true," she answered.
"Poor Francois. He is a genius . . . but he is not
Edmond Rostand!"

L'Aiglon was not the first play of Rostand's that Sarah
produced.

In 1896 the door-keeper of the Renaissance came to
her with a worried look.

"There is a wild man outside who wants to see you,
madame," he said.

"Who is he?" asked Sarah.

"He said Jean Richepin had sent him but I doubt it
myself; he looks like a savage."

"Send your wild man to me," commanded Sarah,
laughingly, and turning to me explained: "It is this boy
Rostand, whom Jean spoke of. It appears that he is a
poet, and quite a good one."

342 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

I made as if to go, but Sarah stayed me. "Wait, we
will see what he looks like I" she said.

It was thus that I was present at the first meeting be-
tween Sarah Bernhardt and Edmond Rostand.

Sarah had her own fashion of greeting visitors. Her
leg pained her if she used it too much the phlebitis per-
sisted so she would remain seated. When anyone was
announced especially a stranger she would hold out
her hand with a word of greeting, bid him sit down,
and then cup her chin on her hands and look at him
steadily, without a trace of expression.

Few men there were or women either, for that matter
who could withstand the hypnotic appeal of those glori-
ous blue eyes, which at fifty retained all the sparkle and
fire of youth, together with the mysterious inscrutability
of approaching age I

Sarah received Edmond in her customary manner, with
myself an interested and, secretly, much amused spec-
tator.

Rostand sat down, placed his hat and gloves on the
floor beside him, and then turned to await Sarah's in-
structions to proceed.

I saw then why the door-keeper had called him a "wild
man." His hair was at least five inches long and was in
the most indescribable tangle, as though it had not been
brushed for months. It was matted over his forehead,
on which beads of perspiration were standing.

Rostand turned and looked at Sarah. Sarah, chin on

(Photo, Henri Manuel)

Mme, Earnhardt's Sitting-room at her Last Home,
56, Boulevard Pereire, Paris,

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 343

hands, was steadily staring at him. It was an awkward
moment for a young, aspiring poet!

Tremendously nervous, Rostand moistened his lips
and twice tried to speak,

UT

Sarah stared as before.

UT

Sarah's expression 'did not change.

Finally Rostand could stand it no longer. Seizing his
hat and gloves he rose precipitately and dashed from the
room without having spoken a word regarding his mis-
sion.

Sarah screamed with laughter.

"Eh bien!" she exclaimed. "So much for our young
poet!"

But when she went out of the theatre she was met by
her coachman, who was in great agitation.

"If it please, madame," he said, "there is a man sitting
in your carriage, and he won't get out!"

A man sitting in her carriage I It was like a pagan
mounting the steps of an altar I

Sarah hastened outside. Sure enough, there was her
carriage, and there was a man in it. One look at his
mass of hair and Sarah realised who he was.

It was Rostand I

"Throw him out!" commanded Sarah, while we stood
by .aghast at this sacrilege committed by an unknown
poet.

344 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

Then Rostand to my amazement found his voice* He
stood up in the carriage and bowed to Sarah.

"I don't wish to have to knock your coachman down a
second time," he said, "so, madame, it will save time if
I explain that I am going to ride home with you!"

"You are going to ride home with mel" said Sarah.
For once even her ready wit had forsaken her.

"I came here to read you a poem, and I am going to
read it!" continued Rostand firmly.

Sarah burst out laughing.

"So be it I" she cried cheerfully. "Jean told me that I
should hear your poem, and if you cannot read it to me
anywhere except in my carriage, why, you may do it
there!"

And she got into the carriage with him, and it drove
off much to our amusement, of course.

But we were not astonished. Nothing that Sarah
Bernhardt did had the power to astonish us any more.

The poem which Rostand read to Sarah as they drove
about in her carriage it was the first of a score of similar
rides, for which it established the precedent was part of
his play, La Princesse Lointaine, one of the sweetest
poetical dramas ever penned.

Sarah produced it six months later and it was a great
success. In fact, it made Rostand as a playwright, and
paved the way for his triumph in L'Aiglon*

He was enormously grateful to Sarah and his gratitude
was the foundation of his love for her.

Sarah's association with the Rostands did not cease

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 345

with the death of the great Edmond. When he died he
directed that if ever his famous property, Arnaga, near
Biarritz, was sold, Sarah Bernhardt should be given the
first opportunity to acquire it But when it finally went
under the hammer it was bought by a South American,
and this happened a few weeks after Sarah died

When it was first put up for auction there were no
bidders, since the reserve price had been set at two mil-
lion francs.

"I am too poor even to purchase a lot in a cemetery,"
Sarah said at the time, and, in fact, she was at that mo-
ment having difficulties over payments for work on the
tomb built for herself at Belle Isle a tomb in which she
will perhaps never lie because, five days before her death,
the property was sold. There is talk now that the pur-
chasers, who are transforming the property into a Bern-
hardt Museum, will petition that her body may be brought
to its ordained resting-place.

Sarah early recognised the budding genius in the boy
Maurice Rostand, son of Edmond. She encouraged him
in every way, and she returned to the stage after the
Great War in order personally to appear in his La Gloire,
which is conceded by critics to be a masterpiece.

Maurice Rostand is a peculiar individual to look at,
and there are many stories about him; but there is no
doubt about it he is Edmond Rostand's son and a
worthy successor of his great father. Maurice Rostand
is a genius. And Sarah Bernhardt was the first to recog-

346 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

nise genius in him, as she had been the first to recognise
it in his father.

Let me read to you what Maurice Rostand wrote the
day that Sarah Bernhardt died :

"Since yesterday, Poesy and her Poets are in mourn-
ing. The muse of Shakespeare and of Musset carries
crepe upon his shoulder of gold ! Phedre has died a sec-
ond time! And a poet feels in the shadows about him
a thousand wounded heroines who cry; and their im-
mortal verses, like useless bees, search in vain for lips
whereon to restl

"Permit me, however, to render homage to Her who
has taken with her to a radiant tomb all the lyricism of
an epoch! Permit me to render homage to the living
poesy of Sarah Bernhardt!

"Yes, she herself was the theatre poetique! The heroes
of poets, on the dangerous road of the centuries are in
danger of succumbing, and more than one disincarnated
heroine would not reach the far country without the
helping hand of genius such as Hers.

"To affirm their existence, it is necessary from time to
time that a heart of fire and passion cause their passions
and their pains to live again. Lorenzaccio, the young
debauche, for having one night taken this voice of crystal,
is launched to more than eternity! The sister of Ariane
and her great sob of bete divine fills the world more pro-
foundly.

"The Poets are not so niggardly that they do not rec-

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 347

ognise to what horizons a voice like that can hurl their
songs. You knew it, Musset ? You knew it, my father I
, . . Thou knowest it, my heart.

"I write on the first midnight of her death, her first
glacial night, when shaken by Her I have contracted from
her passage an insulation which is the proof itself of her
astra. This insulation the whole of an epoch has re-
ceived, and the trace of her passage has glorified the
poets, even when she was not saying their verse. The
beauty and the genius of Sarah Bernhardt made the
shadow of Herself penetrate into all the arts she epito-
mised. Who knows in what measure the genius of
Gabriele d'Annunzio has not warmed itself at that Great
Flame? I have recognised in more than one of these
sisters of voluptuousness and of fever She who was Di-
vinity in La Ville Mortel One finds her everywhere.
Here in a poem by Swinburne; there in prose by Wilde,
in an arabesque by Beardsley, in a motif by Claude De-
bussy, in a song of Maeterlinck. . . .

"Burn, immortal tapers, before her great Memory 1"

Who shall say that this was not the voice of Edmond
Rostand, living again through the charmed pen of his
son?

CHAPTER XXX

SARAH signed the lease with the civic authorities of Paris
to run the Theatre de V Op era Comique, on the Place du
Chatelet, in November, 1898. She immediately changed
the name to Theatre Sarah Bernhardt, and on Janu-
ary 18, 1899, s ^ e opened it with Adrienne Lecouvreur.

This was a curtain-raiser, so to speak, and it soon gave
place to L'Aiglon, which has been consisteritly included
in that theatre's repertoire ever since.

By a singular irony of coincidence UAiglon was being
played at the Theatre Sarah Bernhardt on thart sad night,
the twenty-sixth of March, 1923, when the world of art
and drama was thrown into mourning by her death.

It was at the Theatre de FOpera Comique, it will be
remembered, where Sarah saw her first play as a little
girl. And it was there that she played her last.

Although it was to be nearly a quarter of a century
before the final curtain fell, Sarah found her energy,
though not her fortitude, diminishing. Further and fur-
ther her sentimental life was being pushed into the back-
ground, as the cares of business and of management
weighed on her.

She moved to a little red-brown house on the Boule-
vard Pereire, and there at last, after all her wanderings
amongst the different quarters of Paris, she found a per-

348

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 349

manent home. Into it she brought the accumulated treas-
ures of a lifetime spent in travel, including gifts that had
come to her from every corner of the globe.

She installed herself in this house alone with a secre-
tary, for her son was married now and living in a street
near-by, in a home of his own.

Here also she brought the waiter Claude, who loved
to call himself "I'ecuyer de Sarah Bernhardt" or "Sarah
Bernhardt's butler," and Felicie, her maid.

Sarah was very particular over her table. She insisted
on the best. Although she herself ate frugally, her
guests were always given the choicest that could be pro-
cured.

Sarah was a vegetarian she remained so, in fact, all
her life although on one or two occasions perhaps she
may have pecked at a bird, a slice of venison, or a similar
dainty.

In the morning, at eight o'clock, she would partake of
an orange, a light roll, and drink a cup of weak tea. The
orange- f or-breakfast , habit she acquired in America,
where fruit customarily precedes the first meal of the
day.

Then she would work until noon, when she would be
served with her only real meal an omelette, perhaps,
and a piece of fish, and more fruit. Until she was thirty-
four she never tasted cheese it offended, she said, her
aesthetic se'nse 1 but when she grew old, a light gruyere
or a Pont-1'Eveque was a favourite dish of hers.

At five in the afternoon she had an invariable glass

350 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

of champagne, -and at seven an osuf souffle or something
similarly light. For years her diet was prescribed by
doctors, and never a week went by after 1890 that Sarah
Bernhardt was not examined by a physician.

Despite the accident to her leg and the subsequent
phlebitis, which grew more serious with every recurrent
attack, Sarah continued to act in the plays she produced
at the Theatre Sarah Bernhardt One after another she
produced L'Alglon, Hamlet, La Sorciere, Le Proces de
Jeanne d'Arc, La Belle au Bois Dormant, La Befa, La
Courtisane de Corinthe, Lucrlce Borgia, Les Boufons,
and Jeanne Doree.

Thrice, after she opened her theatre, she undertook
long, fatiguing tours of America and Europe, and once
she went to Australia, South Africa and New Zealand.
"Bernhar'dt's Circus" was what her travelling company
was facetiously nicknamed by the Paris press the fun
and criticism of which, however, had grown considerate
and kindly.

"Sarah Bernhardt is a national institution; to criticise
her is like criticising the Tomb of Napoleon," said Le
Journal des Debats one evening.

The Prince of Wales, who was shortly to become King
Edward VII was a warm friend of Sarah Bernhardt,
and on one well-remembered occasion paid an informal
visit, together with the Princess of Wales, to her home
in Paris.

"What did you talk about?" I asked, the next day.
"Dogs and dresses," said Sarah promptly.

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 35 l

"The Prince, 11 she continued, "is tremendously inter-
ested in dogs, and there we have a common ground."
Once the Prince called on Sarah in her dressing-room
this was when she was at the Renaissance.

Word was sent in advance, of course, that he was com-
ing and she was requested to be ready to receive him
at ten o'clock. At that hour she was customarily on the
stage, and her entourage was excited at the possibility
of her not being there to receive the Royal visitor.

The stage-manager suggested advancing the time of
the whole piece, so that the third act would be finished
by ten, but this did not suit Sarah, who knew that such
an arrangement would make many people who had pur-
chased seats miss a part of the first act.

She settled it in her own characteristic fashion.
"Let him wait," she said. "After all, he isn't King
yet I"

At ten o'clock punctuality is the politeness of kings
the Prince arrived. When Sarah returned, she found
him in the wings, watching the life behind the scenes with
intense interest. It being draughty there, he had not
removed his hat.

He advanced his hand, but Sarah kept hers at her side.
She was in one of her haughty moods that evening.

"A King may wear his crown, but a Prince must xc-
move his hat in the presence of a lady," she said loftily.
The Prince snatched his silk hat from his head, blushed
deeply, and murmured a confused apology. It was prob-
ably the one occasion in his life when a woman treated

352 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

him with such scant consideration for his Royal dignity !

After the famous dinner "en famille" given to the
Prince and Princess of Wales by Sarah it was supposed
to be strictly secret, but Sarah saw that it leaked into
the papers ! she received a note from one of the ladies-
in-waiting to the Princess, who, with her Royal husband,
was living at the Hotel Bristol in the Place Vendome.

"Her Royal Highness was much interested in the gown
which Madame Bernhardt was describing to her last
night, and wonders whether Madame Bernhardt could
spare her a few minutes this morning to consult with her
regarding it."

Truly a strange message to be sent by a Princess to
an actress I

Sarah visited the hotel and had another long chat with
the Princess, whose beauty and grace were the talk of
Paris. They talked of a good deal besides dresses. The
Princess loved to speak of her beloved Denmark, which
Sarah knew well, and they recalled the first occasion on
which Sarah went there, just after she left the Comedie
Frangaise, when the Princess was* also visiting her native
country.

Sarah gave the Prince a Swiss shepherd-dog, and he,
after becoming King Edward VII, sent her an Airedale
puppy. This puppy came to an unfortunate end shortly
afterwards. It died in agony as the result of being bitten
by Sarah's pet panther.

After he came to the throne, King Edward VII and
Queen Alexandra invariably * 'commanded" a perform-

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 353

ance whenever Sarah was in London. It might be at
Windsor, or at Sandringham, or in London, but after-
wards the kindly King and the lovely Queen of England
would carry Sarah off for a confidential chat in the home-
like atmosphere of their private apartments.

Sarah had hundreds of reminiscences to relate regard-
ing her two Royal friends. How she loved Queen Alex-
andra !

In 1904 Sarah had another and severe attack of
phlebitis while on tour in America, and lay ill for a long
time In San Francisco. It was thought then that she
would eventually lose her limb. The poison was gradu-
ally creeping upwards, and she could not put her foot to
the ground without intense pain. She remained a fort-
night in bed, with her leg held up by a pulley.

Sarah's fortitude throughout her long trial was amaz-
ing. As soon as her foot became sufficiently well to
stand upon, she insisted on returning to the theatre.

Finally, when she was playing in Bordeaux in the early
spring of 1915 she had another and more critical attack,
and was taken to Dr. Moure^s private clinic.

Dr. Pozzi, the famous surgeon, was sent for from
Paris, but after examination he shook his head.

u Amputation cannot save her," he said, and he refused
to undertake the operation.

Another doctor was sent for, Dr. Denucce, also a great
surgeon. Dr. Denucce put the situation squarely before
the actress.

"There is one hope for you amputation but it is a

354 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

chance in a thousand, for the infection has reached the
spine," he told her.

Saf ah heard her sentence calmly.
"Cut it off 1" she said.

When they laid her on the operating table, they tried
to cheer her with words of encouragement, but Sarah's
brave smile shone wanly.

"I have already faced death seven times," she said.
"If this is when my light is to go out, I shall not be
afraid!"

She was in a terrible condition, not only physically but

financially. The operation was a success, but she had not

a cent with which to pay the clinic or the doctors. The

Rothschilds and their friends finally came to the rescue.

"All my life, it seems, I have been making money for

others to spend 1" she said, but with no complaint in her

voice.

She faced her future then, penniless after the millions
she had earned, and with one leg, as courageously as she
had returned to face a jeering Paris after her first visit
to London.

By the irony of fate her sick-room at Bordeaux was
filled with flowers worth literally thousands of pounds,
that had been sent from all quarters of France by her
worshippers.

"If I only had the money these flowers cost!" she re-
marked resignedly.

The war was on, and the ambulance in which she was
being taken to the station on her way back to Paris over-

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 355

took regiment after regiment of soldiers on their way to
the Front.

"La fflorieuse blessee" the papers called her, and the
soldiers thronged about the ambulance and her car on
the train, taking the flowers that decorated their bayonets
and throwing them at the indomitable genius who sat
inside it with tears in her eyes.

Within six months Sarah herself was at the Front,
playing from an armchair for the poilus who were bat-
tling to check the invader.

She was then seventy-one years old.

CHAPTER XXXI

WHEN she was asked by a journalist in 1898 to describe
her "ideal," Sarah Bernhardt replied:

"My ideal? But I am still pursuing it! I shall pur-
sue it until my last hour, and I feel that in the supreme
moment I shall know the certainty of attaining it beyond
the tomb."

In these few words lie the expression of Sarah Bern-
hardt' s whole life.

Indefinable as perhaps her ideal was, it was the star
that guided her throughout her long career. It was that
grasping after the unattainable, that desire to take the
one more, step ahead, that culte du parfait, as Rostand
expressed it, that inspired her battles and illuminated
her art.

Shortly after she moved to the Boulevard Pereire, she
purchased the Fort des Poulains, on Belle Isle-sur-Mer,
on the coast of Brittany, and here she spent the summers
of her convalescence, surrounded by faithful friends and
members of her family.

She built a magnificent house at Belle Isle, and an-
other building on the farm adjoining it. This she called
"Sarah's Fort," and it was consecrated to the great

356

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 357

tragedienne. Here she would spend hours in the com-
pany of her son, or with Jules Lemaitre, or some other
trusted friend, and here she was safe from the cares and
worries of her business in Paris for she still retained
the active management of the Theatre Sarah Bernhardt
"It is," said the Illustration recently, u with a real sen-
timent of satisfaction that we learn that the Fort des
Poulains, the property of Madame Sarah Bernhardt at
Belle Isle, is to become a museum consecrated to the
great tragedienne and is not to become a tourist hotel
and dancing-place, as had been reported. By a sentiment
of respect and piety, the group which has purchased the
property has so decided. They will try to bring to the
property a collection of souvenirs of the great artiste,
and tourists will thus be able to visit the surroundings
which were so dear to Sarah Bernhardt's heart. . . .
What souvenirs are attached to Belle Isle, where La
Princesse Lointaine will sleep one day perhaps her last
repose I"

Once when in Florida, Sarah expressed the desire to
hunt an alligator. There was no alligator in that region,
and the local admirers of the artiste were in despair until
it was remembered that the druggist of the town pos-
sessed a baby alligator, which at the moment (it being
winter) was tranquilly asleep.

He consented to give the creature for the purposes of
the hunt, and it was placed secretly in a marsh near-by.
The next day Sarah was told that the hunt had been or-
ganised. She was delighted beyond measure and gaily

358 The Real Sarah Befnhardt.

walked the five miles to the spot, where the sleeping alli-
gator was captured Without any difficulty.

Maurice Bernhardt was at Belle Isle at the time and
Sarah sent him the alligator, together with a letter tell-
ing her son that, he did not need to be afraid of it, for it
was a "quiet little thing" and had not even made a move
since it had been caught.

But, unfortunately, when the alligator arrived at Belle
Isle, it was its time to wake up, and it became a formid-
able customer so dangerous, in fact, that before Sarah
could arrive to view her capture in its new home it had
to be killed.

Sarah had a regular colony of dogs, horses and birds
on the farm.

After the war she- announced her intention of return-
ing to the stage, one-legged though she was. There was
a chorus of protest, which, however, had no effect upon
her.

Money had to be earned, and it seemed as though she
was the only member of the family who could earn' it I So
she returned to the stage, in Athalie, and was given on
the opening night what was possibly the greatest ovation
of her career.

Then Louis Verneuil, a talented young poet who had
married her beautiful grand-daughter Lysiane, wrote a
play specially for her Daniel. It was the story of a
young author, victim of opium. In it Sarah had no need
to move, but spoke her lines sitting in an armchair and

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 359

lying on a couch. Even thus, her tremendous person-
ality and her magnificent voice dominated the house.

Sarah next played in a one-act play, Le Fitrail, by
Rene'Fauchois, at the Alhambra. Then she produced
Reglne Armand, and, finally, created La Gloire, by Mau-
rice Rostand.

Not content with this almost superhuman labour, she
was arranging to play with the Guitrys 1 at the Theatre
Edouard VII when, just before Christmas, 1922, she
was seized with an attack of her old enemy, uremia.

I was among those who called at the little house in
the Boulevard Pereire on the night of December 31, when
it was thought that she must die. But she rallied, and
though all her friends and her family and she herself
knew that it was but a temporary reprieve, she insisted on
going back to work. Not this time, on the stage, but in
her own house before the motion-picture camera.

A syndicate organised by a young American in Paris
and directed by another American, Leon Abrams, made
her an offer of, I think it was, 5,000 francs per day. She
was, as usual, penniless, and the offer was a godsend.

She posed for the film, with her chimpanzee, in the
studio at the rear of her house.

So needy was she that, just before lapsing into uncon-
sciousness for the last "time, she demanded that the mov-
ing-picture men should be admitted to the bedchamber.

"They can film me in bed," she said, her voice scarcely
audible, so weak was she. "Now, don't object," as Pro-

360 The Real Sarah Bernhardt

fessor Vidal remonstrated, "they pay me 5,000 francs
each time I pose!"

Her insistence on fulfilling her contract to play in this
cinema play was, according to the doctors, the cause of
her last collapse. It was more than her strength could
stand. She was really dying when she faced the camera
on the last two occasions. But her indomitable will tri-
umphed over her body almost to the last, and, until the
dreadful malady paralysed her, she continued acting.

My tears are falling as I write these last lines. They
are difficult sentences to fashion. I am no poet, and
words could not add to the drama of that night when the
divine Call-boy came for Sarah Bernhardt.

She died at five minutes past eight o'clock, her snow-
white head pillowed in the arms of her son, Maurice.

"Be a good boy . . . Maurice." These were her last
words. . . . The curtain descended. . . .

That day, Monday, the twenty-sixth of March, Victor
Hugo died for a second time.

Even before she died, Sarah Bernhardt had outstripped
Glory and had become Legend.

Nothing of hers had faltered : not her intelligence, not
her heart, not her talent,' not her genius. She was com-
plete.

She was the glory and the light of the French theatre.
The light that is extinguished will not flame again. How
dark it seems !

Dead, she is greater than in life. Who of us would
not accept her luminous night?

The Real Sarah Bernhardt 361

Her epitaph, by Jacques Richepin :

t

CI-GIT SARAH
QUI SURVIVRA

THE END