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 conscious 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 acquaintance was, nor
understanding the nature of his business with her. Once in Camille
Doucet’s office, however, she was quickly informed.
“This is Pierre Berton, junior,” said Doucet, introducing her. “He
would like to see you a member of his company at the Odéon.”
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 singled out by him for a part at the Odéon 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 proposition 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 Odéon staff has been reorganised and that Chilly
has been named co-director with Duquesnel.”
Sarah’s spirits fell like lead. How could she hope for an engagement at
the Odéon, 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!” he said. “I have spoken to
Duquesnel, and he is on our side. Chilly will have to agree!”
An appointment was made for Sarah to see Duquesnel on the following day
and, after some further conversation, Berton offered to accompany Sarah
home. In the cab Sarah asked him what was the reason for his interest
in her.
“Since the day I saw you in _Les Femmes Savantes_ at the Comédie
Française,” Berton answered, “I have believed 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.
I have watched you for two years, and I am prepared to help you at the
Odéon, as far as possible, if you will allow me to do so.”
[Illustration: Pierre Berton, Husband of Mme. Berton, and one of
Sarah’s Earliest Intimate Friends.]
Sarah’s reply, Berton told me in later years after I had become his
wife, was to seize and kiss his hand impulsively.
From that moment began the wonderful romance which developed between
these two--Pierre Berton, the accomplished and successful actor, and
Sarah Bernhardt, the _débutante_ 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 Duquesnel’s office at the Odéon, on the
day following Sarah’s meeting with Berton and Doucet. Sarah was
immediately taken with Duquesnel, a mild, blue-eyed man, endowed with
prodigious activity and with the name of being possibly the greatest
_metteur-en-scène_ in Paris. He was exceedingly courteous to her and
set her at ease immediately by declaring that he thought her engagement
could easily be arranged.
She asked about Chilly. “You shall see him to-morrow,” 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.”
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 Duquesnel.
The next day Sarah went to Duquesnel’s 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!”
“If you had been alone here I would not have consented 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 Odéon, to return to the Comédie
Française 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 Odéon in 1866. In 1868 she was famous. In 1872 she
re-entered the Comédie Française, where she remained eight years. In
1882 she was married, 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 l’Amour et du Hasard_ (The Game of Love and Luck), by
Marivaux, was the piece in which Sarah made her _début_ at the Odéon.
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 conspicuous was her lack of success
that the piece was withdrawn 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 opinion 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 audience the night Sarah
Bernhardt made her _début_ at the Odéon 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 broomstick!” retorted
Dumas, dryly.
Sarah was then earning the munificent sum of 100 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 rôles.
During this period the love of Pierre Berton for his erratic little
_protégée_ grew enormously. On more than one occasion he asked her to
marry him, but Sarah refused, 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 Bernhardt. He confessed to me in later life after our
marriage that “the days that Sarah Bernhardt consented to devote to me
were like pages from immortality. One felt that one could not die!”
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 never lack for money or
advantages. Neither has he, throughout his long life.
Life at the Odéon 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 dressing. At eleven o’clock, and often again in the
afternoon, 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 glorious quality of her
voice, which was already becoming renowned 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!” 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 became 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 presence, 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 memory. She
could take the book of a new part at night and return on the following
afternoon with the rôle 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, taking 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 ’80’s I attended a picnic at St. Germain, and heard Sarah
recite a part in _Iphigénie_, the first play in which she appeared
at the Comédie Française, 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!”
“Send him away!” retorted Sarah petulantly. She 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!”
“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!” 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 weeklies. 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. Furthermore, I have loyal
friends who will protect my name with their swords.”
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 profession 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 unceremonious mode of
address, took the gloves and flung them on the floor.
“I thought the chair was clean!” he said contemptuously.
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.
This came towards the end of her first year at the Odéon, 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 _première_ of _Kean_, Dumas appeared in a
box at the Odéon 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. Berton, 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 rôle 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 nervous, Sarah
continued speaking her part. The words of the poet were given their
exact intonation, every syllable 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.
“Come!” he said to Sarah, extending his hand, “they want you!”
Sarah shuddered and shrank backwards.
“Come!” 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! 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.
When she appeared before the curtain pandemonium broke lose. “Sarah!”
“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 the 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 chapter. Meanwhile, he remained her
most bitter and most persevering critic.
[Illustration: Sarah Bernhardt in a Scene from _La Tosca_ with Pierre
Berton, when their Romance was at its Height.]