Episode now succeeded episode in the life of the young actress--for she
was still not more than twenty-eight years old.
She quarrelled with Francisque Sarcey and fell in love with an old
friend of the Odéon--Mounet-Sully, the handsomest actor on the French
stage, who, like Sarah, had been taken from the Odéon by the management
of the Théâtre Français.
She acquired her famous coffin, which never afterwards left her, and in
which her remains now lie at Père Lachaise.
She was sued right and left for debt.
Her sister Régine died.
Her own health became precarious, and a physical examination showed a
spot on her right lung.
Most of these events occurred within the first three years of her
re-engagement at the Comédie Française. Her eight years at this theatre
were among the most eventful of her life.
During them she became the darling of one part of Paris, and the scorn
of another part. During them she was credited with having had “affairs”
with no less than nine prominent men. During them her fame spread
throughout the world.
Her quarrel with Sarcey dated from the moment she felt herself strong
enough to stand without his aid. I shall never believe that her
liaison with Sarcey was actuated by anything except the motives of
professional expediency. In fact, she practically admitted this to me.
“Sarcey,” she said, “was one of those highly-gifted but intolerant
men whose one aim in life is to mould the opinions of their friends
and intimates to suit themselves. He was a brilliant writer, a still
more brilliant conversationalist, and there is no doubt that, as a
theatrical critic, he was head and shoulders above any other then
living in France.
“His judgment was deferred to by most of the theatrical managers,
and especially by those at the Comédie, whose political views and
connections were the same as those of Sarcey himself. It was said that
Sarcey could procure the admission or the resignation of anybody at
the Comédie. He was extremely opinionated and very hard to change once
he had made up his mind. He hardly ever forgot a slight, and never an
insult.
“He was unquestionably an enemy of mine from the beginning, and I
made him my friend when it became necessary to do so, but not because
I was in any doubt as to his character. I found that, like many
geniuses, he was insupportable in private life. He would rave and
tear his hair twice or three times a day over matters without the
slightest consequence. He usurped the privilege of ‘protecting’ me,
and as a consequence a wrong interpretation was put on our friendship
by the theatrical world, to which the word ‘protector’ meant only one
thing--lover.
“People were bound to comment on the fact when a prominent man like
Sarcey came night after night to the theatre and insisted on seeing me
home. Why, he used to speak of me to his friends as his _protégée_.
What actually happened was that my art and my determination to succeed
triumphed over his enmity, and, finding that he could not hamper my
career, he did his best to make people think he was responsible for it.
“He was subject to fits of extreme jealousy, and would carry on for
hours if I so much as accepted another man’s invitation to dinner. He
acted as though he owned me, and when things got to this pass I decided
to demonstrate to him that he did not.”
She accomplished this very effectually by yielding to the supplications
of Mounet-Sully.
When Sarah re-entered the Comédie Française, Mounet-Sully was the
reigning power there. His fame was widespread; he was probably not only
the finest but also the handsomest actor on the European stage.
Of Mounet-Sully it was written: “He is as handsome as a god, like a
hero of Greek tragedy,” and it was of these tragedies that he was
incomparably the greatest interpreter of his epoch.
There is reason to believe that Sarah’s affair with Sully was secret
for many months during which she and Sarcey, who suspected nothing at
the time, remained friends.
Later, however, he began to hear gossip linking their names, and once
he overheard Sarah address Mounet-Sully by the familiar “_tu_.” This
may or may not have been significant, for artists of the French stage
generally use the second person singular in talking among themselves.
Mounet-Sully also was young, and of a jealous temperament. There came
a day when he could no longer bear the covert sneers of the critic.
Coming down from his dressing-room after a rehearsal, he found Sarcey
striding backwards and forwards on the stage.
“What are you doing here?” he shouted. “Do not deny it--you are waiting
for Sarah!”
[Illustration: Sarah Bernhardt (aged 30) and her son, Maurice, on the
only occasion when he acted with her.
_Photo, Henri Manuel._]
]
“What if I am?” demanded Sarcey imperturbably. “Who has a better right?”
“Pig! Son of a pig!” cried the enraged young actor, losing all
self-control at the cool cynicism of the critic. “I challenge you to a
duel!”
“I do not fight with children!” replied Sarcey, and spat on the floor
to signify his contempt.
Sarah had been standing in the wings, and had overheard the dispute.
She now came forward.
“Francisque, take me to supper!” she said, darting an angry look at
Mounet-Sully. She could never bear these open quarrels between her
admirers.
The actor did not speak to her for a month, but they composed
their differences later and remained lovers for almost a year,
only to separate again as the result of another fit of jealousy on
Mounet-Sully’s part.
For a short while they were again enemies, and then, once more
deciding to make it up, remained friends throughout the remainder
of Mounet-Sully’s long career. When he married--his grand-daughter
recently obtained a _premier prix_ at the Paris Conservatoire--Sarah
was present at the wedding, and sent the young couple a magnificent
gift.
In 1874 Sarah was taken ill, as the result of a cold, which developed
into pleurisy. She was in bed for a month, and at the end of this
period an examination by three doctors revealed that one of her lungs
was slightly affected. She was advised to leave the theatre, and to go
to Switzerland for six months.
“How long do you give me to live?” she asked one of the physicians.
“Not longer than five years, if you do not take a complete rest until
you are cured,” he replied.
“Five years! But that is a lifetime!” she answered. “When I was
seventeen the doctors gave me only three years, and I have lived
thirteen. I shall continue acting until I die!”
And, despite all remonstrances from her friends, she returned to the
theatre as soon as she was able to leave her bed. To the doctors’
astonishment also, ten months later the spot on her lung completely
disappeared. Perhaps it had never existed!
About this time she was asked by an admirer what he could send her as a
souvenir.
“They say I am to die,” said Sarah, gaily, “so you may send me a
coffin!”
The admirer took her at her word, and a week later she received a
letter from a famous firm of coffin makers, stating that an order
had been received for a coffin for mademoiselle, which was to be
constructed according to her own wishes.
Sarah was most particular in regard to this coffin. She made several
designs, only to discard them one after the other. Finally she agreed
that it should be constructed of fine-grained rosewood, and that the
handles and “hoops” should be of solid silver. She afterwards had these
changed to gold, but subsequently, during one of her frequent periods
of impecuniosity, she sold the golden hoops and had them replaced with
the silver ones that were on the coffin when she was buried.
For the remainder of her life this coffin, “_le cercueil de Sarah
Bernhardt_,” never left her, even when she was travelling. It attained
an almost legendary fame. She had a mahogany trestle made for the
coffin, on which it stood at the end of her great bed, so that she
could see it from her pillow, without an effort, on awakening.
“To remind me that my body will soon be dust and that my glory alone
will live for ever!” she said.
“How long will it last?” she inquired of the makers when they delivered
the coffin.
“For centuries!” replied they.
“It will need to last at least one, for I am determined to disappoint
the doctors and live to be a hundred!” she answered.
She delighted to be photographed lying, dressed in different costumes,
in her coffin. More than fifty different photographs and sketches were
made of her in this situation. On occasions, when guests came to her
house for tea, she would serve it to them on the coffin.
Once she held a mock funeral. The rosewood coffin with its golden
ornaments was brought with much pomp and ceremony into the studio-salon
at the rear of her apartment, and Sarah, dressed in a long white robe
and with a lily in her hand, climbed into it and lay at full-length as
though dead.
While I played the “Funeral March” by Chopin on the piano, the poet
Robert de Montesquiou ceremoniously placed lighted candles around the
coffin; while the other guests, who included Jeanne Bernhardt, Madame
Guérard and Madame de Winter, kept up a monotonous chant, reminiscent
of the burial service.
She carried the coffin everywhere with her. It was a sight to see it
loaded on top of the ancient carriage in which she was wont to make
her provincial trips. At hotels in which she stayed, the coffin was
invariably taken into her bedroom before she herself would enter it,
and placed in the accustomed position at the foot of the bed.
On one occasion when we were touring the South of France, the
_personnel_ of a hotel at Nîmes struck sooner than permit the coffin to
be brought into the hotel. The superstitious proprietor was in tears,
and swore that the funereal object meant unhappiness to his family and
bad luck to his business.
Nothing daunted, Sarah insisted on the coffin being brought in, and
then called together the members of the troupe.
“You and I,” she said to me, “will be the cooks. You,” indicating
Pierre Berton (then my husband), “will be the waiter.”
Other members of the troupe were given their parts as chamber maids,
dishwashers, valets and the like, and for a whole day we ran that
hotel. The next day the _personnel_, having been given free tickets
to the theatre, were so impressed by Sarah’s personality that they
returned to work in a body, and the manager, declaring that he had
never eaten better meals than those prepared by Sarah and myself,
refused to accept a franc in payment for our rooms and board.
As soon as it was finished, Sarah had the coffin taken to her flat and
placed alongside her Louis XVI. bed. Whenever visitors came to call
upon her, she would make a point of showing them this strange piece of
furniture.
Her sister Régine, who was tubercular, had been sent to Switzerland,
but when her disease became complicated with another malady, all hope
was given up, and she returned to Paris, to her sister’s flat.
Sarah had only just moved into this new home and had only one bedroom,
so Régine and she at first shared the same bed. Régine’s condition
grew so serious, however, that the doctors warned Sarah that she could
no longer sleep with her sister without a serious risk of contracting
the malady.
Accordingly, Sarah made up a bed in the coffin and slept in that.
When the doctor came he was horrified.
“Take that thing out!” he ordered. “It is not yet time!”
With some difficulty Sarah convinced him that the coffin was not meant
for her sister, but was her own bed. A few days later Régine died.
The tragedy had its effect on Sarah’s life for a year or more, and
she became a devout worker. Her name gradually ceased to be connected
by gossipy writers with the scandals of the day. But after a year of
mourning she flung off her mask of grief and “_La Grande Sarah_,” as
she was known, again became a reigning queen of Paris.
She fitted up one of the rooms of her flat as a studio, and here, when
she was not at the theatre or resting, she worked at painting and
sculpture.
Sarah Bernhardt, as Charles de Lagrille said, was not simply an
incomparable artiste; she was _the_ artiste--artiste in the most
complete sense of the word. She understood and realised in the most
perfect fashion the ideal of Beauty.
Sarah was not only the interpreter of Phèdre,
“_La fille de Minos et de Pasiphæ_,”
that demi-goddess whom she incarnated so superbly; she was also the
wise genius who discovered and launched poets and authors without
number--Coppée, Mendès, Richepin, and the two Rostands, father and
son. But her love of beauty was not confined to the theatre alone;
she was equally at home in all branches of Art; she was novelist,
dramatist, painter and sculptor.
Sarah Bernhardt published, in 1878, as we shall see, a book which was
greatly appreciated by the literary critics of the time and which
was entitled “In the Clouds.” Replying to the famous and scurrilous
publication “Sarah Barnum,” she wrote in retaliation a work called
“Marie Pigeonnier.” She was also the author of her own “Memoirs,” and
of two modest works of fiction, one of which was published only a few
years before her death, as well as several short stories.
Three successes were recorded by Sarah Bernhardt, the dramatist. They
were _L’Aveu_, produced at the Odéon in 1888 by such interpreters
as Paul Mounet, Marquet, Raphaele, Sisos and Samary; _Adrienne
Lecouvreur_, a piece in five acts, in which she played the title part
herself, and in which have since played such distinguished actors as
de Max, Gerval, Decœur and Charlotte Barbier; and _Un Cœur d’Homme_, a
three-act play, which Henry Roussel and Emmy Lyn produced in 1909.
But the theatre is only one sphere of Art. The great actress was also
a great painter. Her pictures, said critics, lacked the masterly
technique that only long experience and training could have given her,
but they were frank, well-proportioned, and distinguished for their
colour values.
Just after she returned to the Comédie Française, she painted my
portrait, and this picture, needless to say, is still one of my most
prized possessions. It is reproduced in this book.
At the Salon of 1878 she showed a remarkable composition entitled
“Young Girl and Death.” This canvas represented Death clutching at an
artiste with a bouquet of flowers in her hand. It was an indication of
the morbid strain in her character.
In 1872, after her first triumph at the Comédie, the sculptor
Mathieu-Mesnier asked for permission to make her bust. She consented,
watched his work, and asked innumerable questions. Thereafter, nothing
would do but that she herself must become a sculptress.
Her first attempt in this direction was a medallion bust of her
aunt at Neuilly. This was finished in one night and when exhibited
astonished the critics by its virility and resemblance to the model.
Mathieu-Mesnier continued to instruct her, and she passed most of her
nights in modelling.
Her next effort was a bust of her young sister, Régine--made a few days
before the latter’s death. Others of her best sculptures (many of which
were sold at the recent auction in Paris) were “After the Tempest,”
a group in marble; busts of Victorien Sardou, Blanche Barretta,
Busnach (the dramatist who prepared Zola for the theatre), Henry de
la Pomoraye, Coquelin, junior; her son, Maurice; Louise Abbema and
Edmond Rostand. The last was completed after the poet’s death, and was
exhibited in the Rostand museum.