Out of a multitude of aspiring actresses Sarah Bernhardt, at the age of
twenty-four, had jumped into celebrity practically in a single night.
The success of _Kean_ continued; the theatre was packed night after
night. Berton, hitherto the greatest figure on the stage of the Odéon,
himself had to bow before the woman whose genius he had been the first
to perceive.
Their intimacy continued, though necessarily in secret, on account of
Berton’s other attachments. Success turned Sarah’s shock head a little,
but for many months she remained faithful to the loyal man who had
befriended her and had made her victory possible. Their idyll was the
talk of the theatre. No one then dreamed how bitterly she would turn
against him in later years.
She had no lack of other admirers. They flocked round her. There was
Jules Garnier, and most notable of all perhaps François Coppée, whose
genius Sarah discovered in an odd way.
She was dining in the house of a friend and was introduced to a small,
pale-faced young man, whose wealth of dark hair was smoothed back from
his brow. “He had,” Sarah told me later, “the eyes of a dreamer and the
head of a saint.”
Coppée shyly shook her hand, and seemed to want to say something, but
to be too bashful.
“Come, François,” urged Madame Agar, the great _tragédienne_, who was
the hostess, “you have been wanting to meet Mlle. Bernhardt for weeks,
and now that you have the chance you are dumb!”
“He has written a play,” she explained to Sarah, “and he thinks that
you should be the one to play in it.”
“It was written for you,” said the young poet, simply.
François Coppée was then unknown, and Sarah had never heard his name
before. But the subtle compliment of writing a play round her touched
her heart, and she determined to grant him his wish.
“We will hear it at once!” she decided.
Two hours later she had enthusiastically promised to make Duquesnel and
Chilly produce the piece, which was called _Le Passant_, and within
four months it was produced at a benefit matinée. Then, after it had
proved an enormous success, it was included in the regular Odéon
repertoire, which it has never since left.
If _Kean_ had been a triumph for Sarah, _Le Passant_ was a vindication.
There had been many to hint that her success in _Kean_ was only an
accident due to fortuitous circumstances and to the fact that she was
popular with the students who thronged the theatre on the first night.
But when she carried all before her in _Le Passant_, she proved herself
to be the great actress that she really was.
Every critic except the dour Francisque Sarcey, who still persisted
in ignoring her talent, joined in an enthusiastic chorus of praise,
and they said much more about her than they did about Agar, who was in
reality the star of the piece.
[Illustration: Sarah Bernhardt in _Le Passant_.]
Duquesnel was triumphant; Chilly was delighted. They had found
another star worthy of the greatness of their theatre. They were
summoned to play _Le Passant_ at Court, in the magnificent setting
of the Tuileries. The Emperor Louis Napoleon, after the performance,
descended from his throne and kissed Sarah on both cheeks, afterwards
presenting her with a diamond brooch set with the Imperial initials.
This brooch was not among the property of the _tragédienne_ which was
recently sold by auction in Paris, and I believe there was a story
that, pressed for funds during a trip to London after the revolution,
she pawned it and never subsequently regained possession of it. She was
like that all her life. Always the desperate need for money, always the
large extravagance, the royal expenditures that she could not afford!
This was the age of literary giants. Neither politics, nor even
religion, had half the power to stir the passions of the educated
masses that a literary war between two editors or two dramatists
possessed. The two great rivals for public popularity were Victor Hugo
and Alexandre Dumas the elder, and there was a deal of fanaticism in
the fervour of their respective partisans. Public meetings were held
denouncing one or the other. Victor Hugo’s political martyrdom was of
recent memory, and this gentle character, this splendid genius, was the
prey of attacks which were at once unscrupulous and false. Newspapers
were started by chiefs of the different literary factions, and dozens
of duels, some of them mortal, resulted from the wanton attacks on the
reputations of two of the greatest men of the time.
Sarah’s first meeting with Victor Hugo occurred about a week after the
_première_ of _Le Passant_, in which she took the adolescent male rôle
of Zanetto. It suited her to perfection, for she had retained her
boyish slimness and her general allure of _gaminerie_.
After the performance she was presented to Hugo, who had been watching
the play from the depths of a _loge_. Public opinion was running high
in Paris at the moment, and it was considered inadvisable that either
Victor Hugo or Alexandre Dumas should show themselves in public.
Sarah had ignorantly allowed herself to be carried away by the
fulminations of the Dumas clique at the Odéon, and actually shuddered
when she held her hand out to Hugo to be kissed.
“Ah, mademoiselle,” remarked the great author, with a sad smile, “I see
that my greatest trial is to come in your prejudice against me!”
Sarah was touched, and could not bring herself to believe that this
meek man, with the deep marks of suffering about his eyes, was really
the monster his enemies would have the world believe. It was currently
rumoured that Hugo was an anarchist, that he had deserted his wife,
that he had five mistresses at one and the same time, and that his
life consisted of one immorality after another. He was accused of many
political crimes also--and with as much reason.
“I am my own judge of men, monsieur,” said Sarah.
Victor Hugo bowed low, muttered a word of adieu and later wrote Sarah
as follows:
“MADEMOISELLE,
“Yesterday I was presented to you, trembling lest you might
not accede to my request and play in my _Ruy Blas_. But I was
tongue-tied in the presence of your beauty and your charity; I,
who am a man of words, was dumb. I pray you, see Chilly; he knows
my wishes. Believe, mademoiselle, in my sincere admiration,
“VICTOR HUGO.”
Sarah saw Chilly, only to be informed by him that it had been decided
to put off the revival of _Ruy Blas_ until the following season.
Instead, when _Le Passant_ was finished, Sarah played as star in three
plays which definitely established her position as one of the greatest
actresses of the period. These plays were _L’Autre_, a delicious comedy
by Georges Sand, _Le Bâtard_ and Theuriet’s _Jean Marie_.
Before she could play _Ruy Blas_, the war of 1870 broke out.
Before we go into the war experiences of Sarah Bernhardt, experiences
which, moreover, forged her character, into a species of flexible
steel, two episodes must be mentioned which have been published before,
but which, in my opinion, have been scurrilously misinterpreted. One
refers to the fire in her flat in the rue Auber, near the Opera,
and the other to the serious illness that followed one of Sarah’s
everlasting practical jokes--which this time took the form of trying to
make the world believe that she was dead!
Sarah had, as before stated, taken a seven-room flat in the rue Auber
which, with the aid of certain of her family, who were now only too
willing to resume their relationship with her, she had somewhat
luxuriously furnished. That in this connection she went heavily into
debt to various furniture dealers, decorators and the like I do not
doubt, for such became her invariable practice in later life. From the
day she jumped into fame, she was invariably surrounded by dealers
anxious to sell her all sorts of things, from jewelry to houses, and
from pianos to horses and carriages. These men knew that her salary
at the Odéon was still only 160 francs per month, on which she could
certainly barely afford an attic. They knew also that the income she
received from her father’s estate had been greatly diminished, and was
now less than 200 francs monthly.
With less than 500 francs--twenty pounds--a month, and with the
inevitable extra expenses incidental to her career, what could Sarah
Bernhardt be expected to afford? Her mother could spare her nothing.
Her aunt Rosine, in an effort to placate the girl for the many slights
of childhood, had given her two ponies and a smart little carriage, but
this, at the same time, cost a good deal to keep up. None of her other
relatives gave her anything. When she appealed to them they would say:
“Why do you ask us? You are a famous actress, and famous actresses can
always have money!”
How true that was, Sarah had early found out. I do not think it was any
particular regard for morality which kept her from treading the path so
many of her sister actresses were obliged to tread, and from procuring
herself one or more rich protectors; it was rather that Sarah’s whole
life now was bound up with the stage, and that in her love-affairs she
consequently never strayed beyond its charmed circle.
I do not say that Sarah Bernhardt was any less or any more
“immoral”--and we must try and remember, we readers of a different
race, that the moral code of 1870 was not that of to-day--than were the
half-dozen other leading actresses of the time; but I do assert that
she never formed a liaison merely for the sake of the protection and
wealth it could give her.
When Sarah loved, when this brilliant woman gave herself, it was always
for her art, and to someone who could assist her in the material
realisation of her lofty and ambitious dreams. Such a thing as forming
an alliance merely to rid herself of the burden of poverty probably
never even entered her mind, which was always lifted above the sordid
things of life. But when, as in the case of Pierre Berton, she was
offered the love of a great and a noble character, or when, as in the
case of Damala, she was swept off her feet by a romantic passion, she
succumbed willingly enough.
A list of the men whom Sarah Bernhardt loved and by whom she was
loved reads like a biographical index of the great Frenchmen of
the nineteenth century. It includes actors, painters, sculptors,
architects, cartoonists, poets, authors, and playwrights, but not one
idle rich man or rich man’s son!
It is to be doubted whether Berton, Chilly or Duquesnel helped her to
furnish the flat in the rue Auber, and it is therefore somewhat of a
mystery how she managed to assemble the strange setting which framed
her at this period of her life. Her taste was all Louis XV., and quaint
bowlegged chairs and tables were scattered round her in great disorder.
Sarah’s was ever a careless nature and, being extremely imperious as
well as chronically penniless, she could not keep a maid. She had her
aged grandmother living with her for a period, and she had taken her
baby from its hired nurse and installed him in a nursery at her own
home. The child took up the grandmother’s time, and the household work
seldom got done, except when Régine, Sarah’s wild and hoydenish little
sister, could be persuaded upon to do her share.
“I shall never forget my first visit to Sarah’s flat,” said my husband
to me once. “It was on a Saturday afternoon; we were going over a part
together, and I had promised to finish the recital at Sarah’s home. I
arrived about three o’clock, and was met at the door by a tumble-haired
whirlwind in an old chemise and skirt, whom I with difficulty
recognised as Régine, Sarah’s little sister. Régine looked as if she
had not had a wash for a week, and perhaps she hadn’t. She had great
smudges of grime on her face, and her hands were black.
“She dragged me into the salon, and here I got another shock, for
the room was in the most frightful mess you can imagine. Empty wine
bottles rolled about on the carpet; the remains of a meal stood partly
on the mantelshelf and partly on the table, all mixed up with sheets
of manuscript, which I saw were books of the plays which Sarah had
appeared in. Photographs in gilt frames were here and there, most of
them tumbled on their faces, and over all was a thick layer of dust. I
had to dirty two of my handkerchiefs before one of the chairs could be
trusted not to soil my trousers.
“From another room a baby kept up a wail, and I could hear Sarah
talking to it, trying to calm it. Sarah’s child was then nearly five
years old, but had the development of a normal child of three.
“When Sarah finally appeared, it was in a long smock covered with paint
and grease. Her hair was done anyhow, and her wide-set eyes sparkled
with fun as she viewed my distaste for her surroundings.”
During all the time Sarah and he remained intimate friends, Pierre told
me, he could never bring himself to set foot again in her home.
“It spoiled all my conceptions of her,” he said. “In the theatre she
was such a fairylike, delightful creature. One could not help loving
her. But at home----!”
One night, after a gay supper following the theatre, Sarah returned
home to find her flat, in a building situated at the corner of the rue
Auber and the Boulevard Haussmann, in flames. The fire had started
in her own apartment, from a candle incautiously left burning by a
maid-of-all-work who occasionally came to clean up. The blaze had been
discovered shortly before midnight, and at one o’clock in the morning,
when Sarah arrived, it was still confined to three rooms of the flat,
but showed symptoms of spreading, in spite of the efforts of the
firemen.
To her horror, Sarah discovered that nobody knew whether her baby had
been saved or not!
There had been nobody but Maurice in the flat when she had left it for
the theatre that night, with the exception of the charwoman, who had
long since gone. The grandmother and Régine were both absent in the
country. Unless one of the firemen had seen and rescued the child,
therefore, there was every chance that it was inside the burning
building.
The flat was of peculiar construction, because of the angle of the two
streets. One end of it was disconnected from the other by a passage-way
which had doors at both ends. The fire had started on the rue Auber
side, and though it had spread upwards and downwards, it had not jumped
across the court in the rear, or worked around the corner to the
Boulevard Haussmann side, in which was the nursery.
Sarah took all this in at a glance. Her intense horror and dread of
fire was not even thought of. Brushing aside those who tried to hold
her back, she dashed into the Boulevard Haussmann entrance, ran up the
stairs and into her flat. Groping her way through the smoke to the
nursery, she found her son safe and sound in a deep sleep. She wrapped
him in a blanket and came down with him into the street. There she
collapsed, and was ill for two days.
When she was well enough to hear the news, they told her that the
whole building had been burned down and that, but for her courageous
intervention, her child would undoubtedly have been burned to death.
The best proof that Sarah even then possessed a number of jealous
enemies was the statement openly made in the theatrical world that,
weighed down with debt, she had caused the fire herself in order to
collect the insurance.
This story, which has since been still more widely spread, is refuted
by the following two facts: first, if Sarah had caused the fire, she
would hardly have left her baby to run the risk of being burned to
death; secondly, she had not yet paid the premium on the insurance, and
it was consequently null and void. Instead of her collecting from the
insurance company, it was this company, La Foncière, as the proprietor
of a flat set on fire through carelessness, which collected from Sarah.
She was forced to pay the fabulous sum of forty thousand francs in
damages, which she was enabled to do by the proceeds of a benefit
performance at the Odéon, at which Adelina Patti, then at the height of
her fame, sang.
The receipts of this benefit were more than the necessary forty
thousand francs, and with the remainder Sarah was able to take a flat
at No. 4, rue de l’Arcade. It was furnished, however; and Sarah was
still without the means to furnish a flat for herself until her late
father’s man of affairs came and proposed to arrange a cash payment to
her out of her father’s estate providing, she would insure her life in
his favour for 250,000 francs. This was done, and Sarah rented a large
flat at the corner of the rue de Rome, almost opposite the one which
had been burned. This she was careful to insure immediately.
The other episode for which Sarah was much criticised was her famous
practical joke at the Odéon, after a quarrel with Duquesnel.
A call-boy rushed through the theatre screaming: “Bernhardt is dead!
Bernhardt is dead!”
With one accord the entire cast rushed off the stage to Sarah’s
dressing-room, where they were met by an extraordinary sight.
Sarah was reclining, dressed completely in white, on a flat couch
placed in the middle of the floor. Her hands were crossed over her
bosom, which appeared to be motionless, and a red stain was visible
on her chin and neck. At the four corners of the couch were placed
gigantic candles, like the _cierges_ used in churches.
Who had placed her like that? Nobody knew. Her dressing-maid was in
hysterics, and could not be questioned. Duquesnel came in and, taking
in the tableau in a glance, burst into tears.
The performance was stopped and the curtain rung down. A doctor and an
undertaker were hurriedly sent for, and the audience was informed by
the grief-stricken Duquesnel that “Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt had
suddenly passed away.”
Then, and then only, did Sarah sit up, kick over the candles with a
sweep of her legs, and amaze and scandalise the mourners by going into
screams of helpless laughter. Duquesnel was white with anger. Running
to his office, he wrote and signed a note cancelling her contract, and
stating that after that night her services would not be required.
Sarah threw the note in his face and flung herself out of the theatre.
For hours she drove about in the Champs Elysées, careless of the
falling snow. Next day Duquesnel sent her a note stating that, on
reconsideration, she would be permitted to return, but that an apology
would be expected.
A few hours later an emissary from Sarah arrived at the theatre.
“She will not come back until you ask her to do so on your knees!”
he told Duquesnel. The latter, realising that he stood in danger of
losing his most popular star, went to Sarah’s home and apologised.
Sarah reconsidered her remarks about making him get on his knees, and
admitted that she had only meant to play a little joke, and had had no
idea that it would go as far as it had. There, except for satirical
comments on the “crazy Bernhardt” in the weekly papers, the matter
ended.