As I said at the conclusion of the last chapter, I did not accompany
Sarah Bernhardt on her first visit to the United States, and I can
therefore give no first-hand impressions of the trip. What is more,
she told me so much when she returned, and so mixed were her own
impressions, that it is hard for me to say now whether she actually
enjoyed her visit to the New World or not.
“What a detestable country!” she would say sometimes. “What a
marvellous country!” she would exclaim at others. Similar mixed
conclusions are often brought back from America by visitors even now.
She adored the scenery, the energy and the extravagance of the
Americans, and she thought the American men perfect--all except the
reporters. But she hated the American women--and she hated most of them
until she died.
“Their voices!” she would exclaim, and shudderingly put both hands to
her ears. “_Quelle horreur!_”
When she opened in New York, one of her most expensive costumes,
she told me, was completely ruined by women visiting her in her
dressing-room, who insisted on fondling it and exclaiming over its rich
embroidery.
During her visit to London, in the June of the year when she first went
to America, she met Henry Irving.
“They tell me, madame, that you are going to the United States?” said
Irving.
“Yes,” said Sarah. “I must make money, and the Americans seem to have
it all!” Even at this period that was the generally accepted idea!
“Madame,” said Irving, “what you say saddens me extremely! America is
a country of barbarians! They know nothing about the theatre, and yet
they presume to dictate to us! If I were you I would not go to America,
madame! What you will gain in dollars, you will lose in heart-throbs at
their ignorance of your art!”
Irving himself, however, went to America a few years later.
Sarah brought back from the United States six hundred thousand francs,
a variety of animals--including a lynx, which bit her chambermaid and
had to be killed a week after its arrival in Paris--a profound respect
for American enterprise, and the reputation she had long been hoping to
make for _La Dame aux Camélias_.
When Alexandre Dumas was told of her intention to play _La Dame_ in New
York he cried disgustedly: “That’s it! Try my play on the barbarians!”
As a matter of fact, Booth’s Theatre, where Sarah opened in America,
was filled on the first night with almost the entire French colony in
New York, which was a considerable one. Practically the only Americans
there were the critics, and a few wealthy society people who held
regular boxes. The play chosen for the first night was _Adrienne
Lecouvreur_.
The next day Abbey, the impresario, rushed into Sarah’s bedroom--Sarah
usually received her business folk in the morning while still in
bed--waving a bundle of papers. His face wore the look of one stricken
by some grievous blow.
Stopping short, he gave Sarah a look of indescribable anguish, and then
sat abruptly down and mopped his face. He could not speak.
Sarah sat up in bed, fright on her countenance.
“What is it? What is it? The theatre has been burned down, and my
costumes are destroyed?”
“No,” said Abbey, “but your reputation is!”
The American papers, without exception, said that Sarah Bernhardt was
a magnificent actress, but that her _répertoire_ was filled with plays
which should never be shown on the American stage. “They are doubtless
considered all right in immoral Paris,” said the _Globe_, “but they
will certainly only succeed in disgusting Americans.”
And they proceeded to tear poor _Adrienne Lecouvreur_ to pieces! A
highly improper play, they said, and one which should never be given in
the presence of American women. One paper seriously advised the police
to descend on the theatre, close the performances, “arrest this woman,
and send her back to France.”
Sarah was bewildered. She had played _Adrienne_ in Paris, in London,
in Brussels and in Copenhagen, and everywhere it had been met with
tremendous applause. This was her first experience of American methods.
The fact of the matter was that only one of the critics present at the
opening night knew French, and they gathered quite wrong impressions
from the few words they did understand. The play, given at full length
in a word for word English translation, would doubtless have been
insufferably vulgar. In French, it was whimsical, delightful in its
irony, and entirely free from anything objectionable whatsoever. The
American critics, however, could not understand the subtlety of the
lines, and they gathered their opinions solely from the action.
The manager of the theatre followed Abbey into Sarah’s bedroom. He wore
a strained, a hunted look.
“You have seen the newspapers?” he asked Abbey.
“Yes!” Consternation was in the eyes of all three.
“What shall we do?” inquired Abbey, at last.
“There is only one thing to do--we must choose another _répertoire_!
They will have us arrested soon, if this keeps up!”
“But that is ridiculous!” angrily said Sarah. “Never before in my life
have I been so insulted! I will either play _La Dame aux Camélias_
to-night, or I will pack up and return to France by the next boat!”
The two men cried out in protest.
“You can’t do that!” said Abbey. “There must be some way out of the
difficulty!”
“I shall play _La Dame aux Camélias_ to-night, as arranged!” said
Sarah, as if this was the last word on the subject.
Abbey and the manager of Booth’s Theatre took their departure, after
arguing with her for some time, but in vain.
“She will do it!” said Abbey, with conviction. “When Sarah Bernhardt
makes up her mind, heaven and earth cannot change it.”
“But we _must_ do something!” said the manager, in despair.
“I have it!” exclaimed Abbey. “We will play _La Dame_, but we will call
it something else. They will never know the difference.”
When Sarah Bernhardt arrived at the theatre that night, she was
astounded to see huge red placards outside, announcing that she would
play _Camille_.
She rushed to Jarrett, the first man she met on the stage.
“What is it, this _Camille_?” she exclaimed furiously. “I know no
_Camille_!”
“Oh yes, you do,” said Jarrett, smiling urbanely. “_Camille_ is--_La
Dame_!”
“Oh!” cried Sarah, and burst into uncontrollable laughter.
The theatre was packed to the roof, this time with a most
representative crowd of Americans. The publicity of the morning had
done its work. Sarah Bernhardt was playing immoral pieces? Well, New
York didn’t know what to do about it, but New York decided to go and
see for itself.
This sort of theatrical psychology is now a well-understood thing. Even
in Paris, when a _revue_ is not making expenses, they bribe the police
to make a complaint about the immorality of one of the scenes--and then
its success is assured. But it was the first time such a thing had been
known in America.
New York liked _Camille_--it liked it enormously!
The critics were not fools, though. Every paper announced the next
day that _Camille_ was in reality _La Dame aux Camélias_, but with an
American name!
They also said that the play had been forbidden in London by Queen
Victoria, which was true; and were very severe on the “prudish Queen”
for her “narrow-mindedness.” Completely forgetting their fulminations
of only twenty-four hours before, they said that it was an unthinkable
crime that such a beautiful play should ever have been banned anywhere.
It was rather “Frenchy,” they admitted, but Sarah’s magnificent acting
more than made up for that.
Sarah Bernhardt made more than a dozen tours in America, and _Camille_
was invariably her greatest success there. It broke all records for
receipts in New York City.
The reputation of the play crossed the Atlantic before Sarah did.
Alexandre Dumas did not know whether to be delighted or dismayed. The
“barbarians” had liked his play!
The success of _La Dame_ in America encouraged Sarah to give it
a fair trial in France, and elsewhere in Europe. Eventually it
became, after _Phèdre_ and _Le Passant_, her greatest success. Even
_L’Aiglon_--another play which received its original baptism of success
in the United States--could not rival it in popularity.
All of which may go to show that American audiences have a better sense
of the dramatic than have audiences in Europe--or it may not!
After witnessing a performance of _Le Sphinx_, which also obtained an
enormous success in New York, Commodore Vanderbilt, who was then at the
hey-day of his power in New York, but was not yet accepted in society
because of his bluff and hearty--not to say indifferent--manners,
was announced to Sarah in her dressing-room. She had heard of this
remarkable man, and was anxious to meet him. Her account of the
conversation, which took place through an interpreter, was amusing.
“His first words to me” (said Sarah) “were, ‘You are a Jewess, aren’t
you, madame?’
“I was offended at his manner, and replied frigidly, ‘No, monsieur, I
am a Catholic!’
“‘That’s peculiar,’ said Vanderbilt, ‘I heard you were a Jewess.
However, it don’t matter. I came to present my respects. You’re the
only woman who ever made me cry!’
“I laughed--nobody could resist him. ‘Yep, by gorry,’ went on the
multi-millionaire, ‘you made me cry! An’ I’ve taken a box for every
night you are billed to play!’”
He kept his word. Looking across the footlights, night after night,
throughout twenty-three performances, Sarah never failed to see
Vanderbilt in his box. Every time he saw her looking at him, he took
out a gigantic handkerchief and solemnly wiped his eyes. When she left
New York, he was among those who saw her off on the boat.
“Ma’am,” he said, “I’d like to give you a present. What would you like
the most?”
Some women, hearing such an avowal from a multi-millionaire, would have
thought of jewels. But Sarah was more original.
“Give me your handkerchief!” she replied promptly.
Vanderbilt was much taken aback, but took out his handkerchief and gave
it to her.
Sarah thanked him. “I shall keep this always,” she told him, “in memory
of the time I made Vanderbilt cry!”
When she got back to Paris, she had it framed and hung on the wall of
her boudoir, but on one of the several occasions that her furniture was
seized for debt, she lost it, and Vanderbilt had meanwhile died.
Theodore Roosevelt, then a very young man, was another of those who
met Sarah Bernhardt during her first visit to New York. He was a firm
friend of hers until he died, and invariably visited her when he was on
one of his trips abroad.
A letter from Roosevelt, extolling her genius, was one of the few she
kept and had framed. It hung until the day of her death in the little
ante-chamber outside her bedroom.
In this letter the former President said in one passage: “I have
altered my plans so as to arrive in Paris after you return from Spain.
I could not come to Paris and miss seeing my oldest and best friend
there.”
During her tour of America in 1892, Sarah had dinner with Roosevelt,
and she loved to recount the experience to her friends on her return to
Paris.
“An unforgettable character!” she would say, and then would add: “Ah,
but that man and I, we could rule the world!”
They came near to doing it, he on one side as President of the United
States, and she, on the other, as the uncrowned Queen of Paris.
Booth, James Hubbard, James Wilcox and James K. Hackett were other
Americans whom Sarah counted among her warmest friends. Hackett
represented the American stage at her funeral.
It has often been commented upon that Sarah Bernhardt never had an
American lover. I heard her speak of this one day with regret.
“I am sure the Americans must be great lovers,” she said; “they are
so strong, so primitive, and so childish in their ardour. The English
are wonderful men to love, because they possess the faculty of bending
one to their likes, dislikes and moods without seeming to make it an
imposition; but the Americans are greater, for they bend themselves to
suit you.”
This absence of Americans in Sarah’s sentimental life is best explained
by the short duration of each of her tours of America and the
distances covered during them. Many towns in America saw Sarah only
for twenty-four hours, and the whole period was a ceaseless whirl
of arriving, rehearsing, playing and departing. She was a genius at
organisation and insisted on attending to the larger details of her
tours herself.
After three weeks in America, Sarah learned sufficient English to know
the simpler expressions, and before 1895 she spoke it very well. On her
tours in America she invariably travelled by special train, the “Sarah
Bernhardt Special,” but this was not by her own arrangement, and she
did not like it.
“They will not put one’s special coaches on the fast trains,” she
explained, “and at night they back one’s car into a siding, where one
is kept awake by the noise of the goods trains being made up, shunting,
arriving and departing.”
On her last two visits to America she did not use either a special
train or a special car, but travelled in drawing-room sleepers. She
said she found it easier and “_beaucoup plus pratique_.”