No. 5, rue de l’Ecole de Médecine 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 façade,
ornamented with some scarcely-discernible heraldic device which told of
past dignity. It had a low, wide doorway, 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, like 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 wineshop, 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 cobbler’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.
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 cafés of the Boul’ Mich’, enlivened the aged edifice
with their cries.
And on the fourth floor of this building, on this twenty-second day of
October, 1844, in 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
Guérard. 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 but
unconscious. Thus, though the baby cried all night, the mother did
not awaken, and in the morning Mme. Guérard 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 naturalised German, had worked in a circus, but had
forsaken 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 became an apprentice
in a big Berlin millinery establishment. After working there a little
more than a year, she fell in love with a non-commissioned officer in
a cavalry 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.
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 _cafés-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
Napoleon 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 probably 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.
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 following 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 suicide 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 confided 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 University of Paris as Edouard
Bernhardt. The family name of this man, according to what Sarah learned
later, was de Thérard, 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 Thérard
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 Thérard, 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 _l’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 delivering 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.
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 cafés or cabarets of the quarter was the signal for a chorus
of congratulations and ironical greetings from Bernhardt’s comrades.
The little flat at Number 5, rue de l’Ecole de Médecine, was furnished
and rented by Bernhardt for Julie, out of his slender student’s purse.
Two weeks before the birth of his child, Bernhardt returned 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 improved, for relatives bequeathed him fairly large
sums, he began to travel, and before his first voyage, to Portugal, he
suggested that the infant Sarah should be sent to his own old nurse,
now become a professional dry-nurse, with a farm near Quimperlé, in
Brittany.
About this time Julie’s fortunes underwent a sudden change for the
better. This came about through several 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 discovered 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 renowned later on, Julie Bernard possessed a gay and careless
disposition that would have made her notorious anywhere. With her
sisters, she began frequenting the cafés that were then fashionable,
and it was not long before the trio began to meet interesting people.
[Illustration: Baptismal Certificate of Sarah Bernhardt, May 21st,
1846.]
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.
Far behind her now the dingy, decrepit old building at 5, rue de
l’Ecole de Médecine! Far behind her the days when she had to trudge
weary miles, in all weathers, to secure orders and deliver hats! Julie
was now a “_fille à 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. Nobles 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 famous spas.
While Julie lived the gay, irresponsible life of a Parisian butterfly,
her daughter Sarah, a weak, anæmic 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 married 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 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 forward 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 husband 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 sisters 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 remained with her all
her childhood, “Flower-of-the-Milk.” She was three months recovering
from the severe 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 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 reputation as a gilded social
butterfly.