When application had been made to Auber, then director of the
Conservatoire--who, on the Duc 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 required 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!
Aunt Rosine was sceptical of Sarah’s ability to pass the examinations.
The Duc de Morny was consoling.
“You will not pass this time,” he said, “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 acquaintance, and on his advice chose
the plays of Corneille, Molière and Racine. Julie wanted the child to
select a part in _Phédre_ for her examination, but Mlle. de Brabender,
the probationer nun, said that this could not be permitted, as _Phédre_
was too shocking a rôle to place on the lips of a _jeune fille_.
In the end, Sarah learned the part of Agnes in Molière’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
practising 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, however, 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 _décolleté_ about the shoulders;
a corset accentuated 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 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 mass
of 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 Léataud.
“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. Mlle. de Brabender and Madame Guérard overwhelmed
her with caresses. Little Sarah was a member of the Conservatoire! Her
career had begun.
Sarah 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 unanimously 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
Mère Sainte-Sophie. Oh, if they had only let me become a nun, instead
of entering this vast, unkind world of the theatre! 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 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 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 Guérard,
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 Duc de Morny sent a note to your mother
saying that Camille Doucet has confirmed that your engagement at
the Comédie Française is arranged for....’
“My mood changed miraculously. I shouted with joy. I ran 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 summoning her to the
Comédie. The day following she was engaged, and signed her contract.
Almost immediately she began rehearsing in the play _Iphigénie_.
About two months before her eighteenth birthday Sarah made her
_début_ at the Comédie, in a minor part. As a _débutante_ 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.
This is what that powerful critic had to say about Sarah on the
occasion of her _début_:
“Mlle. 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 _début_ at the
Comédie on September 1. 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 _début_, in _Valérie_, this same Mirabeau wrote:
“We had the pleasure of seeing in the cast at the Comédie the
young woman Sarah Bernhardt, who made her _début_ recently in
_Iphigénie_. She has improved, but she still has much to learn
before she can properly be considered worthy of the House of
Molière.”
When Sarah appeared in _Les Femmes Savantes_, Francisque Sarcey, who
had ignored her in _Valérie_, devoted several lines to her:
“Mlle. Bernhardt took the rôle of Henriette. She was just as
pretty and insignificant as in _Iphigénie_ and in _Valérie_. No
reflections on her performance can be extremely gay. However, it is
doubtless natural that among all the _débutantes_ 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:
“See! All the world calls you stupid, and all the world knows that you
are my child!”
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 in to aid in
the fight.
In response to questioning by her old friend, Madame Guérard, 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:
“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!” said 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 building with its fearful rows of corpses exposed on
marble slabs, was one of her favourite diversions.
Death had a weird fascination for her. Shortly after she entered the
Comédie she had a love affair with an 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 dressing-room at the
Odéon 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 Comédie on one occasion called
her “Young Bernhardt,” 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
_tragédienne’s_ career like flashes of light, Bernhardt 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 _début_ at the Comédie was a _matinée_ 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 critics, 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 Bernhardt, 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 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 different 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 took it to the theatre one day,
nearly broke up the performance 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!” (Go!) and he would spring at anyone’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!”
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 digressing from our story. We left Sarah as a _débutante_
at the Comédie Française. Her _début_, 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.