I
Victorien Sardou was born in Paris on September 7, 1831. His father,
a native of the vicinity of Cannes on the Mediterranean, came to Paris
in 1819 and followed a variety of scholastic pursuits. His mother was
a resident of the ancient city of Troyes. Victorien's father finally
engaged in literary work, edited text books and taught in schools.
His interesting personality made for him many friends. He never became
well-to-do; on the contrary, he became so entangled in indebtedness
that he gave up Paris and returned to his olive groves in the south
with the hope of being able to satisfy his creditors. He left behind
him Victorien, aged twenty-two, who was struggling to displace with
studies in surgery and medicine his dreams of becoming a poet and
dramatist. But he could not change his gods. A youth who had read
before he was twelve years old the works of Molière, who had
enthusiastically studied archæology and important periods of the
world's history and who had delved deeply into all literature,
especially into the works of master poets and playwrights, was not
made of stuff moldable into something other than his true self.
Saddened by the death of two sisters and left alone by his father,
Sardou continued his medical studies, meanwhile residing in a garret.
His existence would have been extremely miserable had he not been
able to see an occasional play by Hugo, and to satisfy infrequently
his great passion for the opera. In referring to those days of
struggle, he said:
"Ah, don't talk to me of music; that is one of my passions. I remember
a long time ago when I went to the opera--not in a box of stalls, but
right up in the gallery--to hear '_Les Huguenots_' or '_Le Prophèté_'
--I delighted in Meyerbeer--the seats were four francs apiece. I had
probably pawned my best coat to get there; but there I was, and I
never think of those costly evenings without remembering how I enjoyed
them, and felt a certain sense of gratification that I have never
experienced since."
Sardou's inspiration to follow literature began with an incident which
has often been related. In a mood of wretchedness caused by poverty
and the caging of his ambitious soul in a bleak garret, he stood in a
doorway near the College of Medicine to escape the rain and his
thoughts turned to suicide. Obsessed with this desire, he walked into
the storm. A water-carrier, who instantly took his place of shelter,
exclaimed:
"Ah, my friend, you do not know when you are well off."
An instant later a block of granite fell from the building--which was
under construction--and killed the water carrier. Sardou accepted his
escape from death as an omen that he was destined to live and to
become great. Immediately he began those several years of desperately
hard work in which he served apprenticeship for his future career.
Of this period of Sardou's life a writer who knew him well said:
"Only those who have known the sting of bitter want can fully
appreciate the agony of the intellectual student's career. The eager
brain, the famished body, the long night-watches and hideous
nightmares, the struggle to make both ends meet, to keep body and soul
together, the continual battle with poverty, pride, ambition, hope and
despair. Sardou's young life was such a struggle. He possessed a
valiant soul, and he did not give way; the more he had to work against,
the harder he worked, and every new trial fell like a pointless dart
against the steel armor of his resistance. He determined to become
some one, and he realized that the bridge which spans greatness and
nothingness is knowledge."
Desperate but enthusiastic, Sardou toiled with his pen upon articles
for a great variety of publications, receiving poor pay, which he
supplemented with fees received for tutoring. He was a tireless
student. When he wrote upon topics pertaining to history or to
literature, he spoke with authority. The Middle Ages, the Reformation
and the great events of the past which made and unmade nations and
their policies appealed to his poetic temperament. He toiled day and
night, and amassed an amount of erudition seldom possessed by any but
scholars of renown. In the meantime he was working upon his first
plays.
"These were the occasions when I could not afford sardines and dry
bread," said Sardou, "and I had to go to bed supperless."
On April 1, 1854, the manager of the Odéon Théâtre attempted to
produce Sardou's play _Le Taverne des Étudients_, which the crowd
hissed from the stage without witnessing it, and brought
disappointment and sorrow to the young author. With the year 1857
came the earliest rewards for Sardou's long years of labor: marriage
and the route to success. Poverty, lonesomeness, the cramped quarters
of a gloomy garret and the accompanying misery and hopelessness of an
unrealized ambition were not enough: an illness of typhoid fever must
bring despair as a climax. On another floor in the house resided
Mlle. de Brécourt, an actress, and her mother. When the young woman
heard that the quiet, studious young man whom she had often seen was
likely to die, her pity was roused and she became his faithful nurse.
In addition to saving Sardou's life, she was the means of introducing
him to Madame Déjazet, who established the Théâtre-Déjazet. In 1858
Sardou and Mlle. de Brécourt were married. Sardou's plays found favor
with Déjazet, whose talents proved adaptable for portraying his
characters, and success followed success. In 1861 he was decorated
with the Legion of Honor. Nine years after she had married Sardou--
during which time she had seen her husband attain fame and wealth--
Madame Sardou died. Sardou continued to work and his fame became
international. Europe's greatest theaters were producing his plays.
In 1872 he was united in marriage with Mlle. Anna Soulié, daughter of
the curator of the museum in Versailles. The marriage was extremely
happy and the dramatist's success continued. In 1877 Sardou was
elected a member of the French Academy. Though immensely wealthy,
Sardou resided simply at his villa in Marley-le-Roi near Versailles.
He also had two country homes near Cannes, where his forefathers
lived, and a residence in Paris, which he occupied principally for
business purposes. Like Scott, Sardou had a great passion for books
upon every subject, and his home at Marley, like Abbotsford,
contained thousands of volumes. Honors from literary and art societies
throughout Europe came to him. In making appointments to posts in
which a knowledge of literature and the fine arts were important
qualifications, the French government consulted with Sardou, who was
considered an authority. The productive years of his life were serene
ones. He was very generous, always ready to encourage the aspirant,
and had no jealousies. His was a remarkable personality. The late
Edmondo de Amicis thus describes him:
"Sardou looked a little like Napoleon, a little like Voltaire and a
little like the smiling portrait of a malicious actress which I had
seen in a shop window on the previous day. He wore a large black
velvet cap, below which fell long waving gray locks. He had a silk
hankerchief round his neck and was wrapped in a wide dark-colored
jacket, which looked like a demi-dressing gown. My attention was
riveted by his strange face, without beard and colorless, with a long
nose and pointed chin and irregular and strongly marked features,
lighted up by two keenly sparkling gray eyes, full of thought, the
glances of which correspond with the rapid motion of the thin and
flexible lips, and the acute yet kindly expression of the whole face,
sometimes illumined by a bright, slightly mocking smile, like that of
a quite young man. He did not look more than 70 years of age, and when
he spoke he seemed still younger. He spoke with the fluency of an
actor who abuses that power. It was not necessary to question Sardou.
He began to converse with a fluency, an ease and a vivacity of accent
and gesture which forestalled all my questions and satisfied my
curiosity with such an appearance of intimacy and confidence that I
was at first quite stunned, uncertain whether I was in the presence
of the most expansive and frankest man I had ever met or of the
profoundest and cleverest actor that the human mind can imagine."
In his seventy-eighth year, at the time when he received the news of
the success of his last play, _L'Affaire des Poisons_, Sardou, who
had been convalescing from an illness of pulmonary congestion, became
suddenly worse and died in Paris on November 8, 1908. His funeral was
held on November 11 in the Church of St. François de Sales. The
obsequies were national in character. Like all those who had received
the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, Sardou was given a military
burial. Previous to the removal of the body from the house to the
church, eulogies were delivered before Sardou's intimate friends and
members of the Academy. Those present were Frenchmen distinguished
in art, literature, science and politics. Thousands of persons
representing every class of Parisian life--for Sardou's name was known
alike in mansion and tenement--stood with lifted hats as the funeral
procession passed on its way to Marley, and thousands followed the
hearse to the family burial place. From all parts of the world
telegrams of condolence were received by M. Sardou's family. From
Cairo Madame Sarah Bernhardt, whose fame resulted from her
interpretations of the characters in Sardou's plays, cabled: "France
loses one of its glories, Paris a friend, all the unhappy a protector,
and we artists our beloved master, Victorien Sardou."