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Table of Contents added by Transcriber and placed in the Public Domain.
SARAH BERNHARDT AS I KNEW HER
[Illustration: Mme. Bernhardt in her Dressing-room during her
Interpretation of _La Gloire_, by Maurice Rostand, in 1921.
_Photo, Henri Manuel._] _Frontispiece_
]
_SARAH BERNHARDT
AS I KNEW HER_
_The Memoirs of Madame Pierre Berton
as told to BASIL WOON_
_WITH NINETEEN ILLUSTRATIONS_
_LONDON: HURST & BLACKETT, LTD.
PATERNOSTER HOUSE, E.C. 4._
1923
CONTENTS
Introduction vii
Chapter I 11
Chapter II 19
Chapter III 24
Chapter IV 34
Chapter V 45
Chapter VI 56
Chapter VII 68
Chapter VIII 79
Chapter IX 90
Chapter X 101
Chapter XI 113
Chapter XII 125
Chapter XIII 136
Chapter XIV 150
Chapter XV 160
Chapter XVI 171
Chapter XVII 182
Chapter XVIII 192
Chapter XIX 202
Chapter XX 212
Chapter XXI 223
Chapter XXII 232
Chapter XXIII 241
Chapter XXIV 250
Chapter XXV 258
Chapter XXVI 269
Chapter XXVII 279
Chapter XXVIII 288
Chapter XXIX 297
Chapter XXX 308
Chapter XXXI 315
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Mme. Bernhardt in her Dressing-room during her Interpretation
of _La Gloire_, by Maurice Rostand, in 1921
_Frontispiece_
TO FACE PAGE
Baptismal Certificate of Sarah Bernhardt, May 21st, 1846 30
Sketch of Thérèse Meilhan (afterwards Mme. Pierre Berton)
by Georges Clairin, 1881 42
Sarah Bernhardt. One of the best of the earliest pictures 64
Pierre Berton, Husband of Mme. Berton, and one of Sarah’s
Earliest Intimate Friends 102
Sarah Bernhardt in a Scene from _La Tosca_ with Pierre
Berton, when their Romance was at its Height 112
Sarah Bernhardt in _Le Passant_ 114
Letter of Congratulation from Victorien Sardou 154
Sarah Bernhardt in Caricature 160
Sarah Bernhardt (aged 30) and her Son, Maurice, on the only
occasion when he acted with her 184
Sarah Bernhardt in _Théodora_ 196
Sarah Bernhardt in _Hamlet_ 202
Sarah Bernhardt in _Adrienne Lecouvreur_ 224
Sarah Bernhardt in _Les Bouffons_, 1906 260
Sarah Bernhardt in her Studio Dress 280
Mme. Bernhardt’s Sitting-room at her Last Home, 56, Boulevard
Pereire, Paris 302
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 widespread 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 worldwide 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.
To the world, Sarah Bernhardt was the greatest tragedienne who had ever
lived, and that was all. The “all,” you will say, was a very great
deal. I grant you that; but when you have read this book I think you
will say that the title of “great woman,” which Sarah Bernhardt in
reality earned, expresses her true personality far better than that of
“greatest actress.”
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 recounted that
may possibly wound the feelings of those who worshipped Sarah as an
actress, I would point out that the enthralling story of her tremendous
fight against the worst odds that ever faced a woman cannot be properly
told if certain essential elements of her history are suppressed. Such
elements, despite the character they seem to convey, are component
parts of the amazing whole. We cannot reveal Bernhardt in her genuine
greatness without revealing also certain things that in a less
important biography had certainly better have been left unwritten.
For seventy-nine years Sarah succeeded in concealing the facts of her
birth. Yet more than thirty years ago she said to Madame Pierre Berton,
to whose remarkable and faithful memory the facts of this biography are
due, “I hope that, when I am dead, you, who are younger than I am, will
reveal to the world the real Sarah--the Sarah whom the audiences never
knew!”
From time to time thereafter, throughout their long and intimate
association, Sarah told Madame Berton the facts of her birth, of her
childhood, of her absorbing up-hill battle towards celebrity and of her
final conquest. These facts, together with matters of Madame Berton’s
own observation, are contained in this book.
Scrupulous to a fault, Madame Berton refrained from telling or
publishing a word of what had been given her in confidence, until
Sarah’s death released her from her promise, and at the same time put
her under the immediate obligation of fulfilling her old friend’s wish
and “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 Odéon, 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 Odéon wished to cancel her contract because of what
they termed her “incorrigibility.”
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, accompanied her husband
on many of Sarah’s famous tours about Europe. Even after her marriage,
Thérèse 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 told it me in Paris, in the same
simple convincing language, without the addition of literary flourishes
or anything that could detract from the dramatic power of the narrative
itself.
BASIL WOON.
Sarah Bernhardt as I Knew Her
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.
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
insuperable 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 critics, high and low. No less than three books
or pamphlets were written attacking her before she had attained her
fortieth year.
Articles in the Parisian press were sometimes so virulent 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 ambitious
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 saint but because she was not a saint; for to err is
human and to be human 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 anyone else’s case.
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 afterwards 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, first, an actress; secondly, 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 ambition first. After these came
mother-love, vanity, affection and 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.
The happiest period of her life was during the infancy of her son
Maurice; her greatest joy was in his abiding affection. 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 Odéon Theatre.
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 forbidding
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 platforms 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 resounding
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
precisely 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 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
carnations 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-toilette_ 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 expected 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!
As my mother shook hands, I ran behind her and, 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 Thérèse!” she said. “Come here, _ma petite_, and let
Sarah Bernhardt kiss you!”
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 cannot see you if you
hide like that! Come!”
My mother, excusably vexed, dragged me from my hiding-place.
“Come! come!” she said sharply; “speak to Mademoiselle! Go and kiss
her!”
Thus commanded in a tone I knew too well, I advanced 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
shoulders 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. Certainly 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.
“_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 extraordinary 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!
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 them again on our way out, nor do I
remember my mother talking to me.
My heart was dedicated to a goddess. Sarah Bernhardt, from that day
onwards, was my idol.