The publication of Sarah’s book “Dans les Nuages,” which was at once
a defence of her actions, a scornful reply to her critics and a
picturesque description of her flight in the balloon, brought down on
her head still more criticism, and still further admonishment from M.
Perrin, the director of the Comédie Française.
But now she lived a monarch in a little world apart. Her art while
on the stage was such that even her sternest opponents were obliged
to hold their tongues in reluctant admiration, while she now openly
maintained the right to live her private life as she pleased. Every
protest from Perrin brought forth the haughty reply that if he was
dissatisfied she was perfectly willing to leave the Comédie Française
for ever. What made him powerless in any struggle with her was the
fact that the Comédie was a government institution, and that Sarah had
friends in very high places.
She was a striking figure of a woman, as I remember her at this epoch.
Her extreme slenderness, accentuated by the exaggerated lacing
of the clothes she wore, contrived to give her the impression of
height; whereas she was in reality no taller than the normal person.
Her complexion was naturally pale from her anæmia--a malady which
had persisted--but, not content with the effect thus achieved, she
must needs paint her face a chalk white, relieved only by the
slender etching of her widely-separated eyebrows, and by a pair of
cleverly-reddened lips. Her forehead was high and arched, and her hair
was the same riotous and tangled mass of crinkled confusion which
had made her remarkable as a child. Her eyes were the singularly
lovely blue of the clear sky just after the dawn--light-coloured, but
seemingly of illimitable depth.
When she was serious, they would be downcast, shielded by long, curving
lashes, mysterious and almost oriental in their pensive languor. When
she was interested, they would snap into life with an extraordinary
vivacity and play of expression; when she was angry, which was often
enough, actual sparks of blue fire seemed to dart from eyes that had
miraculously grown into two large, burning pools of wrath. No man I
ever saw, except Damala, ever long withstood the challenge of those
eyes when Sarah, wistful and imperious, desired to have her way.
After an interview with her and an ineffectual attempt to discipline
his wilful star, Perrin invariably ended his lecture by throwing up his
hands, uttering a short word of mingled supplication and terror, and
escaping into an inner office.
Sarah was a supreme conversationalist. I never knew anyone her match
in ordinary talk. She could be eloquent on fifty current topics, and
had something original and interesting to say about all of them. The
fact that she could hold such men as Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas fils,
Georges Clairin, Gustave Doré, and others like them, enthralled by the
sheer power of her personality as partly expressed by her skill in
conversation, is proof enough of her many-sided genius.
She was the first great feminine adherent to the capricious cult
of “_je m’en fichisme_,” which is best interpreted as an absolute
disregard of convention and an existence studiously carried along the
lines of “the individual before the crowd.”
Sarah was beautiful; she was brilliant. She was a genius; she was a
hard-worker; she was prodigious in her handling of men--she seldom had
less than a dozen famous ones around her--and her charm, as well as
her antipathetic side, was due to her sublime belief in herself above
everything and everybody.
Perrin, Got and other theatrical celebrities used to beg and plead with
her to dress in quieter and less conspicuous ways which would be more
in conformity with the fashion.
“_La mode!_” she exclaimed indifferently. “_Je m’en fiche de la mode!_
Let fashion follow me!”
And frequently fashion did. Sarah was thin, narrow-chested, bony in
places and walked with a stride. The fashion was for plump women, of
rounded and gracious line. Sarah remained totally indifferent to the
fashion, and within a few years she found herself a leader of the
_mode_, with plumpness and _bouffonerie_ beating a protesting retreat.
When she was forty, her arms had grown so thin that they had to be
concealed, even with evening dress, so she invented the shoulder-length
glove, which immediately jumped into fashion.
She launched several kinds of corsets, one of which still bears her
name. Her footwear was seized on and copied extensively. She was the
first woman in France to wear high leather buttoned boots with an
ordinary street dress.
She was the first woman to bid her dressmaker insert jewels in her
slippers. She was the first woman to wear ostrich plumes as an ornament
to her evening _coiffure_. She was the first woman audaciously to defy
convention, and receive her friends in her painter’s garb of silken
pyjamas!
She did this, she did that, she did anything she pleased. Whenever
anybody started a great outcry against her, others would shrug their
shoulders and exclaim, “_Mais, c’est Sarah!_” She was Sarah. That was
answer enough. If ever a woman in France has been a law unto herself,
it was Sarah at that time--a whole lexicon of law, in fact.
Naturally, she got into numerous scrapes. She was thrice sued for debt,
as a result of her lavish expenditure during the building of her house
in the rue Fortuny. Whenever she saw anything she liked, she could not
rest until she had acquired it. Her salary at the Comédie was only
20,000 francs a year--only £800, even at that time--yet with this, and
the small sums left her by her father and by several relatives, she
managed to live in a style and with an ostentation surpassed by but few
persons of her age.
The furniture in her house had been acquired absolutely regardless of
cost, and a lot of it was taken away again when she did not pay for it.
Dealers were glad to sell things to her, and to take their money as and
when she paid them, for the fact that Sarah Bernhardt had bought an
article was certain to start a fad for it.
Her dresses, her hats and her shoes never cost her anything. In later
years I even heard it stated that her dressmaker actually paid her
to wear his creations! It was a triumph for any dealer to be able to
say, “Sarah Bernhardt bought one like that,” or, “Sarah Bernhardt was
wearing one like that yesterday,” or, “Sarah Bernhardt has one in her
dining-room.”
The mural decorations and the works of art in her house, fortunately,
did not cost Sarah anything. They were mostly gifts of such great
friends as Georges Clairin, Louise Abbema--of whose paintings, when she
died, Sarah possessed more than eighty--Sir Edward Burne-Jones--who had
been caught in the siege of Paris, and had then met and fallen captive
to Sarah--Ernest Duez, Théodore Fantin-Latour, Maxime Guyon, Hector
Giacomelli, Réné Raoul Griffon, Graham Robertson, Luc Olivier Merson,
Germain Fabien Brest, John Lewis Brown, Robert Fleury, Vastagh Gezah,
Alfred Stevens, and many other great and famous artists of the brush.
Most of the above-mentioned persons frequented her house. I have seen a
dozen famous painters and six or seven great authors all listening to
Sarah together--and finding joy in it. She ruled her little court with
a rod of iron, but she wrapped the rod in silk. Victor Hugo, watching
her at work in her studio on one occasion, said:
“Ah! madame, how I wish I could paint!”
“But you can!” replied Sarah.
“No,” said Hugo.
“_Tu es ridicule!_” responded Sarah. “Anyone who can write or who can
act can paint if he tries!”
Then and there Sarah constituted herself his teacher, with the
result that Hugo became an extremely creditable artist, chiefly
with pen-and-ink. His chief delight was in sketching-tours, which
he undertook with Sarah during her rare holidays--tours in which
Clairin and Doré would generally also take part. It was a novel and
extraordinary sight to see these three wonderful men and this single
eccentric woman set forth together on foot from the gates of Paris,
huge sketch-books under their arms.
But things were fast approaching their inevitable climax at the Comédie
Française.
Perrin and his committee had entered into a contract with Messrs. John
Hollingshead and Mayer for a six weeks’ French repertory season at the
Gaiety Theatre in London. The contract called for the appearance in the
English capital of most of the stars of the Comédie, including Sarah
Bernhardt, Sophie Croizette, Marie Lloyd, Mounet-Sully, Coquelin and
Got.
Sarah was afire with excitement at the idea of playing before a foreign
audience, but a difficulty that seemed insurmountable presented itself.
Sarah was still only a _part sociétaire_. An actress enters the Comédie
as a _débutante_, or kind of apprentice. Unless she has extraordinary
talent and still more extraordinary luck, she is likely to remain in
this decidedly inferior position, both as regards rank and salary,
for several years. Then, by decree of the committee, endorsed by
the Minister of Fine Arts, she is made a part member, with half or
two-thirds of the salary of a full member. Sometimes an actress
remained at the Comédie twenty or twenty-five years without being made
a full member. Sarah had been there nearly eight years. The salary of
a full member was thirty thousand francs a year; Sarah was receiving
twenty thousand.
The difficulty arose not so much from the question of salary, however,
as from the fact that Sarah Bernhardt would be playing in a foreign
capital, and would be in an inferior position as regards the billing
and the programmes. The custom of the Comédie was strict in this
regard: the name of the oldest _sociétaire_ in rank appeared first on
the programme, regardless of the rôle she played. This was understood
in Paris; it might easily be misunderstood in London.
“If,” insisted Sarah, “I go to London, it must be as a full member,
with a full member’s privileges and emoluments.”
There was an immediate rebellion in the committee.
“We have had enough of her caprices!” cried Perrin. “Let her remain
here, if she wants to! I will not consent to her demands!”
Nothing in Sarah’s contract, it appeared, obliged her to travel abroad.
So it was settled that she should not go.
Then Hollingshead and Mayer threw another bombshell into the excited
and harassed committee of the Comédie Française. If Sarah Bernhardt was
not coming, they said, they did not want the troupe at all, and they
hereby cancelled the contract!
The end of it was that Sarah obtained her full membership, as did
Croizette, and the whole troupe embarked for London. The first man to
greet her as she stepped ashore in England was Oscar Wilde. He became a
great friend of Sarah’s some years later--a friendship that only ceased
with his downfall.
Sarah’s first visit to London was not the triumph which she had
anticipated, though she had her share of the laurels. Her lodgings at
77, Chester Square which were procured for her by William Jarrett, the
impresario who later managed her tour of America, were crowded with
celebrities, but they came out of curiosity and not to pay homage.
Stories of her eccentricities had long been printed in England. She was
looked upon as a wild woman, and her morals were much discussed and
severely commented upon in staid London society. Everything she did
in London during this first visit evoked hostile comment. The papers
praised her performances, but criticised her sensational appearances in
society, into which she was introduced by Lady Dudley.
Queen Victoria vetoed a suggestion that she should play in a State
performance at Court. The Prince and Princess of Wales were not in
London on this first occasion, and their tolerant influence did not
make itself felt.
Still, there was nothing definite against Sarah, except gossip, and so
much was admitted everywhere. All fashionable London fell captive to
her art on the stage of the Gaiety. The _Times_ acclaimed her as the
greatest emotional actress ever seen on an English stage. She made her
London _début_ in the second act of _Phèdre_, into which she put so
much of herself that after the performance she fainted from exhaustion
and had to be carried home. “Such a scene of enthusiasm,” wrote the
_Standard_, “has rarely and perhaps never been witnessed in an English
theatre.”
Meanwhile, a tremendous campaign was going on against her in the Paris
newspapers. They said that by her eccentric actions she had disgraced
the Comédie Française abroad, and brought dishonour on her country.
It was a despicable campaign, and was founded on practically nothing.
But her enemies in Paris were determined to make hay while the cat was
away, if I may be pardoned for mixing up two proverbs.
Gladstone, who was much struck by the charming and emotional French
actress, introduced her to King Léopold of Belgium, who fell an utter
slave to her beauty. She was seen with the Belgian monarch everywhere,
and, as Léopold enjoyed probably the worst reputation of any prince
in Europe, the fact that he was obviously enamoured of Sarah did not
enhance her reputation.
This incident, in fact, in Republican France, was only an added
cause for dissatisfaction. Léopold was not liked in Paris, and he
was barely tolerated in London; yet Sarah seemed to find pleasure in
his conversation and amusement in his company. He had, of course,
the _entrée_ everywhere, and as often as not he appeared with Sarah,
generally to the secret dismay of his hostess.
There were houses in London at this period where certain
representatives of royalty were looked at askance; and this condition
of affairs obtained also in many European capitals. When I was in
Moscow I was amazed to find that there were several aristocratic but
untitled families who would not have dreamed of receiving a Grand Duke
into their homes.
One of the rumours that gained particular credit in London was to the
effect that Sarah smoked cigars. She received several boxes from male
admirers!
Another story was that she paraded the streets dressed as a man. I
doubt both of the stories myself--especially that as to the cigars, for
Sarah never smoked at all--but they were widely credited in London,
and those of the Paris newspapers that were hostile to the actress
naturally seized on them and reprinted them with avidity. Editorials
were published severely criticising her conduct, and these finally grew
so numerous that Sarah decided to have done with them once and for all.
She accordingly wrote a letter to Albert Wolff, the director of the
_Figaro_, announcing that she had decided to resign from the Comédie
Française.
Nobody believed she would actually resign--she had threatened it too
many times before--but her announcement in the _Figaro_ caused huge
excitement. The Minister of Fine Arts telegraphed personally to Sarah
demanding an explanation. Sarah disdained to reply. The Comédie troupe
was recalled from London, and Sarah was warned not to play for a while,
as the public, “after the things she had done in London,” would be
sure to hiss her. She insisted on playing, however, and was given an
ovation. It was another triumph for her personality. But she had the
critics against her _en masse_.
A few weeks later Perrin refused to postpone the _première_ of
_L’Aventurière_, in which Sarah was playing Clorinde, despite her
statement that she was physically unable to act. The first night was
a failure. Sarah was unanimously attacked in the newspapers, and this
time, enraged at Perrin, she did resign.
She wrote her resignation, posted it, and then fled from Paris, so that
no one could call her back. She was gone five weeks, and nobody knew
her address.
When she returned, she found Jarrett waiting for her with a new
contract for London, to be followed by one for America. She accepted
both, and returned to London with her own company. There the
eccentricities of her previous visit were forgiven, and her triumph was
complete until she made the serious mistake of taking her son to the
home of Lord and Lady R----, where she was invited to play.
Lady R----’s indignation at Sarah’s daring action, though Sarah herself
probably considered it nothing out of the ordinary, knew no bounds, and
she gave secret instructions to her butler. This functionary advanced
before Sarah into the huge ball-room, which was crowded with people
distinguished in British society, and solemnly announced:
“Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt and her son!”
After this she was, of course, unmercifully snubbed, and left in a
rage ten minutes later. This was Sarah Bernhardt’s last appearance in
British society until Queen Victoria, yielding to the entreaties of the
Prince of Wales, lifted the ban and commanded her to give a performance
of _La Dame aux Camélias_ at Windsor Castle.
But this recognition did not come until many long years afterwards.