The Paris papers were full of it; the literary and theatrical world
talked of nothing else: Victor Hugo was to be played again!
It was _Ruy Blas_, naturally, that had been chosen for the opening of
the Hugo season, and it was at the Odéon that the play was to be given.
Duquesnel and Chilly, after many long conferences, had come to the
conclusion that the decision as to who was to be the chief interpreter
of the piece should be left to the illustrious dramatist himself. Sarah
Bernhardt saw Chilly.
“I must play _Ruy Blas_!” she said to him.
“But, mademoiselle, there are others whose claim is greater than
yours,” said the little manager. “Monsieur Hugo cannot and will not be
influenced in his choice! I can tell you nothing until I have seen him.”
Sarah Bernhardt went to Pierre Berton.
“You are a friend of Victor Hugo’s,” she said. “Go to him and persuade
him that I must play _Ruy Blas_!”
She told me years afterwards: “I felt that it was to be the supreme
effort of my life. Something within me told me that, if only I could
play this masterpiece, both fame and fortune would come at once. I was
so sure of this that I determined nothing should stand in my way--and
no other artiste.”
Berton returned jubilant from his interview with Victor Hugo.
“The Master says you are _toute indiquée_!” he told the enchanted
actress; “he has had you in mind from the beginning.”
Rehearsals lasted a month, and Victor Hugo was at each one of them,
an indomitable figure of middle height, his grey wiry hair tumbling
over his ears and collar. Generally he sat in the front row of the
orchestra, but on occasions a chair was placed for him in the wings,
and from there he would jump up excitedly whenever he saw something
which disagreed with his theories as to how the play should be
produced, and would spend valuable minutes trying to demonstrate the
right way in which a passage should be rendered.
One evening, after rehearsals were over, he had a new idea concerning
the part of Ruy Blas. Without stopping to think, he dispatched this
hasty message to Sarah Bernhardt: “Come at once and we will talk it
over.”
“What! Does he think I am his valet?” angrily exclaimed Sarah, and
wrote as much to him. In an hour or so she received the whimsical
reply: “No, mademoiselle, it is I who am your valet!--Victor Hugo.”
This, of course, appeased Sarah, and when they met the next day they
were on cordial terms enough. Two days later Victor Hugo brought Sarah
a huge bunch of roses, which he presented to “My Queen of Spain”
(Sarah’s part in _Ruy Blas_ was that of the Queen).
“I know where those roses came from!” declared Sarah, accepting them
suspiciously.
“From my garden, mademoiselle!” said Victor Hugo, with a bow.
“No, they came from the garden of Paul Meurice! It is impossible that
there should be another rose-bush like that in all France!”
Hugo was extremely disconcerted, the more so as his friend Meurice, who
was standing by, burst into a hurricane of laughter.
“I told you she would know them! I told you!” he roared.
Hugo quickly recovered his habitual wit.
“They are, mademoiselle, the finest roses in all Europe!” he assured
Sarah solemnly. “I offered to buy them, and Paul would not sell; then I
tried to steal them, and he caught me. So I made him give them to me,
since with these roses existing it was manifestly impossible for me to
give you any others.”
Sarah accepted the gift, which was one of a series she received from
the great author. Then Hugo said:
“You know, mademoiselle, if we go by the standards of your ancestors,
the Dutch, we are not really friends!”
“Why not?” asked Sarah, innocently.
“Well, the Dutch have a saying that no friendship is cemented till the
two friends in turn break bread together under their own roofs.”
“Then come to dinner with me to-night--and you, too, Paul?” she said,
turning to Meurice.
“But I cannot do that--I have an important engagement!” said Victor
Hugo.
Meurice, his most intimate friend, who knew all his engagements, turned
to him in astonishment, and Sarah, seeing his astonishment, naturally
thought that Hugo was merely making an excuse so that he would not have
to dine with her. She turned haughtily away. But Hugo, running after
her, laid his hand on her arm in supplication.
“Do not be angry, _ma petite Reine_,” he said, “my engagement is with
you!”
“With me!”
“Yes, I have told the cook to prepare a great dinner to-night, and you
are my guest!”
Sarah regarded him suspiciously. Stories of his libertinage had been
current for years.
“Whom else have you invited?” she demanded.
“Oh,” answered Hugo, vaguely waving his hand, “er--lots of
people--Duquesnel, Meurice here, and--and others.”
Sarah caught the amazed expression on Meurice’s face and, excusing
herself, sought out Duquesnel.
“Has Victor Hugo invited you to a grand dinner at his house to-night?”
she asked.
“No--why?”
Sarah did not answer, but returned to Hugo and held out her hand,
smiling.
“Very well, then, it is understood--I shall come at eight o’clock.”
Hugo was overjoyed and overwhelmed her with thanks. He was completely
taken aback, however, when Sarah Bernhardt arrived at the time
mentioned--with four friends!
The table had been laid for two, as Sarah had expected. But Hugo
treated the matter as a great joke, entertained them delightfully
until midnight with stories of his travels, and went about for days
afterwards telling his friends what a “smart woman that Bernhardt was!”
There was never anything but ordinary friendship, and much mutual
admiration, between Sarah Bernhardt and Victor Hugo, despite all the
rumours that were current then and have been bruited around since. The
principal reason for this was, of course, that Sarah was a young woman,
while Hugo was nearing the end of his long and active career.
“Victor Hugo?” she answered me once. “A wonderful _vieillard_ (old
man).”
_Ruy Blas_ was produced at the Odéon on January 26, 1872, before the
most brilliant audience the theatre had ever seen. Every seat had been
taken days in advance, and hundreds crowded into the space behind the
back rows and stood up throughout the entire performance.
Sarah Bernhardt triumphed. She often told me that never again in her
long career did she act so well as she did that night. And Paris agreed
with her. She was a literal sensation.
When the play was over, she was forced to respond to more than twenty
curtain-calls. She tried to make a little speech of thanks, but failed,
broke down and ran off the stage sobbing, to the huge delight and
thunderous applause of the audience.
Blinded by tears, she was making her way to her dressing-room when she
felt two arms placed about her from behind and a gentle voice whisper
in her ear:
“What, my queen! Are you going without a word to me?”
The grave reproach made her lift her head and turn. It was Victor Hugo.
His eyes, too, were wet.
“Sarah,” he said gravely, “I have but one word to say to you, and I say
it with all my soul: _merci!_”
Georges Clairin, who was present, sketched the two as they stood there
in each other’s arms, mingling their tears of happiness.
[Illustration: Letter of Congratulation from Victorien Sardou.]
The sketch was published some days later, under the title of “The
Goddess and the Genius.” From that day dated the “divinity” of Sarah
Bernhardt. Her art had become supreme, a thing to amaze and astound the
world.
Sarah Bernhardt’s collaboration with Victor Hugo became frequent from
that time forward.
In 1877 Hugo saw her in _Hernani_ and wrote to her:
“MADAME,
“You have been great and charming; you have touched my heart--mine,
the old soldier’s--and, at a certain moment, while the enchanted
and overwhelmed public applauded you, I wept. This tear, which you
caused to fall, is yours, and I throw myself at your feet!
“VICTOR HUGO.”
Accompanying the note was the “tear”--a magnificent, pear-shaped
diamond, suspended from a gold bracelet.
Years later, when Sarah was visiting Alfred Sassoon in London, she lost
the bracelet, and Sassoon, tremendously worried, begged to be permitted
to replace it.
Sarah sadly shook her head.
“Nothing,” she said, “can ever replace for me the tear of Victor Hugo!”
Every critic in Paris, with the sole exception of Francisque Sarcey the
irrepressible, praised with lavish phrases her performance as the Queen
in _Ruy Blas_. But Sarcey was brutal.
“She is a scarecrow with a voice,” he wrote. “Certainly, the
public is entitled to be informed of the reasons MM. Duquesnel,
Chilly and Hugo had for giving her the rôle in which she appears.
She is not yet mature, does not move naturally, and seems to rely
exclusively on her talent for recital.”
Sarah went into violent hysterics when she read the article. She could
not imagine why Sarcey was so venomous. Pierre Berton knew Sarcey
intimately, of course, and tried to intercede for her. He met a rebuff.
“Your _protégée_ has blinded you with her blue eyes,” Sarcey said. “She
is not a great success, and she never will be one!”
The critic continued his devastating articles, seeming to find pleasure
in tearing down the reputation of the young actress. He had an
undisputedly great following, and the management of the Odéon itself
commenced to look askance at this unwelcome publicity.
Sarah was particularly concerned over the effect Sarcey’s diatribes
would have with the management of the Comédie Française, for (secretly)
she longed to be taken back into the fold of the theatre which then, as
now, was the principal play-house of France.
Sarcey’s articles culminated in a vitriolic attack on Sarah’s
interpretation of another rôle (I think it was that of Mademoiselle
Aïsée). Sarah read the attack during an _entr’acte_ on the third
night, and became so ill with anger that a doctor had to be sent for.
She finished her rôle that night, but her acting was so bad that even
critics favourable to her commented upon it.
Girardin, the friend of Victor Hugo and the most famous journalist
of his time, came to her on the following day, as she lay in bed
exhausted from a sleepless night, and said to her without preamble:
“Of course, you realise why Sarcey is attacking you?”
Sarah looked at him in red-eyed surprise.
“No--why should I know?” she replied. “I have never met him!”
“Think again!” urged Girardin. “He says you and he are old
acquaintances!”
Sarah thought, and after a moment she replied: “He is mistaken; I have
never met him.”
“He tells his friends that he met you once at the home of Madame de
S----,” responded Girardin, “and that you were rude to him there----”
Sarah sat up in bed with a bound. “That--that creature--that was
Sarcey?” she cried. “Why--he was _ignoble_! He was criticising Camille
Blanchet, one of my dearest friends, saying that he was a cow on the
stage, and I----”
“What did you say?” prompted Girardin.
“I--I forget; but I think I said that I would rather be a cow on the
stage than a pig in a drawing-room!... But--I had no idea that he was
Sarcey!”
“Well,” said Girardin conclusively, “that was he!”
Sarah was pale with dismay. “What shall I do?” she asked.
“There are only two things you can do,” answered Girardin. “Either you
can ignore him, and let him continue his attacks, in which case you can
say good-bye to your chances of re-entering the Comédie--at least for
the present; or you can--make friends with the man.”
“But how--make friends?”
“I have heard that he is susceptible to a pretty woman!” said Girardin,
drily, “and if you meet him, and explain that you did not know that it
was he, that day at Madame de S----’s, perhaps----”
Sarah understood.
On the following Sunday Pierre Berton (it was he who told me the story,
many years later) saw Sarcey sitting in a stage-box, dressed in a
dandified full-dress and wearing all his honours. His expression was so
triumphant, as Sarah came on the stage, that Berton “smelt a rat” and
decided to watch carefully.
For some months Sarah’s attitude to him had been one of increasing
coldness--coldness that was the more inexplicable, since he had been
her friend and protector from the time she entered the theatre. He
believed now that he held the key to the mystery.
Sure enough, when the curtain fell for the evening, Sarah accosted
Pierre in the wings, and said to him:
“_Ecoutes!_ I don’t feel well to-night; I will go home alone with
Blanche.” Blanche was her maid.
His protests only made her refusal to allow him to escort her the more
emphatic and irritable.
“I tell you I am ill! I must go straight home to bed!” she asserted.
Hurrying through his dressing, Pierre ran to the stage entrance, where
he hid in the door-keeper’s box and watched. He had waited some time
when word was brought to him that Sarah had left--by the front door.
Hurrying round to the front, Pierre was just in time to see her greet
Sarcey, who was waiting there, with an affectionate kiss, and then
mount into the same fiacre with him.
They drove away together, and from that day on Sarcey’s pen ceased
to be dipped in vitriol and became impregnated with sugar, in so far
as Sarah Bernhardt was concerned. Things continued thus until the
inevitable break came, when Sarcey resumed his rôle of merciless
critic. But by that time Sarah did not care. She was back at the
Comédie Française, and not all the Sarceys in the world could have
detracted from her glory nor torn the halo from her brow.
When Sarah quarrelled with Sarcey, she was greater than he.
Afterwards she attempted from time to time to renew her intimacy with
Pierre Berton, but Berton, though remaining her friend and admirer,
scrupulously kept on that footing and declined to return to his old
status of doting lover and slave.
It was his last love affair until, the mother of his five children
dying, he met and married me.