Sarah’s first tour of the United States and Canada occupied seven
months, during which she visited fourteen states and four provinces,
played in more than fifty theatres and appeared before the public more
than 150 times.
When she returned to France, warships fired salutes, the entire city of
Havre was beflagged and illuminated, and some of the most distinguished
persons in France were on the quay to greet her.
She had departed an _enfant terrible_, to use the _mot_ of Sarcey; she
returned an idol, feverishly acclaimed. _Enfin_, France was once more
to salute its Sarah!
Never before had any woman become such an entirely national character.
Others had risen to similar artistic greatness--Rachel was probably
as great a _tragédienne_ as was Sarah at this epoch, and Sarah always
declared that never in her life had she attained the sublime heights
of Rachel’s art--but none had become at the same time a popular figure
amongst the masses, to whom actresses until now had always seemed
beings apart.
The theatre has always been a cult in France, much more so than in any
other nation, but in the sixties and seventies it was a cult practised
only by the few who possessed the requisite education to understand
the difficult verse, the delightful satire, the delicate irony of the
poets whose work then constituted nine-tenths of the plays performed.
Or, on the other hand, there were the so-called popular theatres, but
these were vulgar burlesques of what the popular theatre is to-day.
It was Sarah Bernhardt, more than anyone else, who transformed, with
her magic touch, the theatre in France from the superior, intellectual
toy of the cultured few to the amusement and recreation of the many.
This she accomplished not only by her insistence on dramatic values,
as much as on literary excellence--on scenic perfection as much as on
the handling of phrases--but by her own personal genius in finding the
“common touch.”
When she returned from the United States, it was to find preparations
being made for her to play _Théodora_, the new play by Victorien
Sardou, who was just then coming to the fore. But several other matters
intervened.
First, she fell in love with Philippe Garnier, an actor of considerable
talent; secondly, Garnier persuaded her to make a Grand Tour of Europe;
thirdly, she was introduced to Jules Paul Damala, who took her away
from Garnier and made her his wife; fourthly, Victorien Sardou, on
the advice of Pierre Berton, withdrew his offer asking her to play
_Théodora_ and suggested that instead she should play _Féodora_, an
older play by him and one well-tried by public favour.
These events tumbled one after another into the life of Sarah
Bernhardt, and all had their influence on it.
She first became really intimate with Philippe Garnier at a banquet
given to celebrate her return. I remember that Sarah gave a
demonstration at this banquet of how the Americans ate with their
knives and fingers, and kept us all convulsed by her description of
American food.
“_Mon ami_,” she said to the actor Décori, who sat next me, “you would
not believe it--the Americans never take more than a quarter of an hour
to dine, and they eat in whichever order the cook has prepared the
dishes. If the fruit is ready, then they eat that first! Ugh! It was
terrible!” She shuddered.
The American _cuisine_ was always one of Sarah’s pet abominations, and
on other visits to the United States she was careful to take her own
cook as well as a supply of food, wines and condiments. When Edison
invited her in 1890 to one of his country houses, she is said to have
arrived there with a cook of her own and an entire kitchen staff!
Though Sarah herself liked to make fun of the Americans, she never
allowed anyone else to do so; and when Doré, who had visited America,
related a humorous anecdote somewhat too cutting in its sarcasm,
Sarah caught him up sharply. Doré replied with equal acerbity, and it
was Garnier who distinguished himself by leaping into the breach and
smoothing down the ruffled feathers of the two friends.
Sarah noticed him, began an animated conversation with him, and found
him _spirituel_--in the French sense of the word--well-informed and
charming. She invited him to call and see her.
He called frequently, and a week later was made a star member of
Sarah’s company. It was Garnier who insisted that she should exploit
the publicity gained from her American tour by undertaking at once
another whirlwind tour of Europe, this time going as far as Russia.
The prospect appealed to Sarah, but she was tired and not over-anxious
to undertake the monumental work of organising such an expedition.
So Garnier did this for her, and within two months had the itinerary
completed.
In the meantime Sarah had made a most tragic acquaintance--that of
Damala.
This man was a Greek, of good family, who had originally been destined
for diplomacy, and had come to France to pursue his studies. In Paris
he had rapidly acquired the reputation of being the “handsomest man in
Europe.”
He was tall, physically of classic beauty, and with a passionate,
Oriental face, which was dominated by a pair of warm brown eyes,
shielded by lashes of girlish length.
“The ‘Diplomat Apollo’ was the name by which he was jocularly known
among his friends; and jealous husbands and lovers talked of him as the
most dangerous man in Paris.”
He had had numerous affairs before he met and fell in love, after his
Oriental fashion, with Sarah Bernhardt. One was with the wife of Paul
Meissonnier, a Parisian banker, whose reputation he had ruined to the
extent of forcing her to leave France.
Another was with the daughter of a Vaucluse magistrate, who left her
parents and a comfortable home to follow Damala to Paris, where he
deserted her when her baby was born. This girl wrote a book exposing
Damala, after he had married Sarah Bernhardt, but the book was
suppressed. I never heard what became of her. Perhaps the Seine could
tell.
Young, beautiful and a dare-devil, Damala, when he met Bernhardt, was a
figure to delight the gods of evil. There was no vice to which he was
not addicted, no evil thing which he would not attempt. His Oriental
parties, at which those taking part divested themselves of their
clothing and plunged naked into baths of champagne, were the talk of
Paris.
It was inevitable that Bernhardt, the famous actress, and Damala, the
almost equally notorious _bon viveur_, should eventually meet. Each
knew the reputation of the other, and their curiosity was only the more
whetted thereby.
Each delighted to play with fire, and especially with the dangerously
devastating fire which smoulders eternally within the human soul.
Bernhardt prided herself on her ability to conquer men, to reduce them
to the level of slaves; Damala vaunted his ability as a hunter and a
spoiler of women.
No man, said Bernhardt, could long resist her imperious will; no woman,
said Damala, could long remain impervious to his fatal charm--and to
prove it he would exhibit with pride the clattering bones in his closet.
Like grains of mercury in a bowl of sand, their two natures were
inevitably attracted towards each other. Both were serenely confident
of the issue of that coming clash of wills.
Damala boasted to his friends that, as soon as he looked at her, the
great Sarah Bernhardt would be counted on his long list of victims; and
Bernhardt was no less certain that she had only to command for Damala
to succumb.
She was all woman, feline in her charm and attraction for men, but
herculean in the labour which was in reality the greater half of her
life. Damala was only half a man; he had the exterior, the sexual
attraction of one, but he lacked the vital power to live and to endure
by the labour of his hands and brain.
He was beautiful and brilliant, but only the shell was left of his
manhood, which he had burned out years before his time, for he was
younger than Sarah by three years. Sarah, despite all the marvellous
things which she had already accomplished, had the best of her span of
life before her. Damala was indolent, unambitious except as regards
women, hot-headed, quick to take up an insult, and an unscrupulous
fiend when his passions were aroused. He had the presence and manners
of a gentleman and the mind of a chimpanzee.
Even before he met Sarah, Damala was a victim to the vice of morphine,
and in that curious strata of society which is composed of drug-takers,
he met Jeanne Bernhardt, Sarah’s sister, who had no right to the name,
but who had assumed it at the behest of their mother.
Jeanne had succumbed to morphine before she was twenty-five. She had
followed Sarah’s footsteps into the theatre, but she had none of the
talent of her great half-sister, nor had she the beauty, despite her
early promise.
She was a peculiar-looking woman, with dark hair, a thin face, deep
green pools for eyes, a weak chin and uncertain mouth. She could fill
a small part in a play, with the aid of Sarah’s careful coaching, but
she could not be depended upon; and at times, under the influence of
her special drug, would commit the worst blunders. On more than one
occasion she had almost ruined a play.
Poor Jeanne! She had much that was good in her. She loved Sarah with
a passion which was extraordinary, to say the least, considering
the earlier lack of devotion to one another that characterised the
household of Julie Bernard.
That poor lady was now dead, at the age of fifty-one. She had lived
long enough, however, to see her unwanted child rise to heights of fame
that were almost dizzy, when regarded from her own comparatively small
eminence of beauty and coquette.
The baby she had left to the tender mercies of a _concierge’s_ wife,
and all but abandoned; the thin, delicate child who had wanted to be
a nun, and whom she had never really understood; that being whom she
had created, fruit of perhaps the only genuine passion of her empty
life, had become the favourite toast of the world, the darling of two
hemispheres, with kings paying homage to her beauty and her art.
It is to be doubted whether Julie ever really understood the miracle
that had happened. It is to be doubted also whether she ever credited
Sarah with the genuine greatness that was hers. Almost to the day
of her death, in fact, she was steadily lamenting her daughter’s
extravagances and eccentricities--she, of all women, whose foibles had
once shocked the gayest city in the world!
It takes a strong will and a cool head to survive the fast life of the
theatre, especially when that life is lived as Sarah Bernhardt lived
it. Though Sarah might appear strong; though her constitution, which
had once been delicate, might now seem to be made of spun steel, in
reality she was still delicate--extremely so. It was her will that
triumphed, the will to accomplish, to create, to live--the will which
is another name for genius.
But little Jeanne, the centre of her mother’s fond hopes, had neither
strength of body nor power of will. She had not genius, only a facility
for mimicry. The life that sustained and exhilarated Sarah, ruined and
finally killed her.
Sarah’s feeling for Jeanne was the pity which is akin to love, and not
the sisterly devotion she might have felt had her earlier history been
less unfortunate. She helped the girl all she could, saw that she had
work, and that she was able to earn sufficient money. She took her to
America, in the hope that travel and the change into a newer, freer
atmosphere would work the miracle she so ardently desired.
Sarah’s hatred for drugs was one of the abiding passions of her life.
She herself had such an unquenchable spirit within her that she could
not imagine the plight of those who were compelled to indulge a
fanciful morbidity with such artificial stimulants.
Once, shortly after discovering that her half-sister was taking
morphine, she thrashed Jeanne with a riding-whip and locked her in her
bedroom. There for four days she kept her a prisoner, denying her both
food and drug in an unscientific attempt to tame her desires, which, of
course, ended in failure. Despite all Sarah’s efforts, Jeanne slipped
gradually down the hill and into the pit which is the inevitable fate
of those who seek the bliss of this artificial paradise.
Morphine had come into general use as a medicine during the war of
1870, and many doctors and soldiers had learned to listen to its
dangerous appeal. They taught its use to their women, and the alleged
miracles worked by the drug became noised abroad. Its use became almost
fashionable!
People who frequented the salons took it shamelessly, just as anyone
else would take a glass of champagne. It was said that opium dulled
your cares and finally made you forget them, but that morphine kept you
conscious of them and actually made you enjoy them!
Jeanne and Damala were members of a group of morphine-takers connected
with the stage, who made no secret of their vice. Damala was a fair
amateur actor--it was in this direction and not diplomacy that his
ambitions lay--and delighted to frequent the _coulisses_ (as the French
term the wings), the Green Room, and the other mysterious haunts which
lie behind the footlights. Many were his victories in this half-world
of pleasure and of work.
When Jeanne spoke of Damala to Sarah, the latter felt herself repelled
and yet fascinated. Outwardly she denounced him, but inwardly she was
enormously interested in this notorious man, and longed to meet him.
Unconscious of the insidious spell that was at work, enchaining
their two destinies, Sarah privately determined to see this arrogant
monster, this darling of the drawing-rooms, this man who was called the
handsomest being since Apollo.
They met finally at the house of a friend who was curious to see what
they would do when brought together.