During the rehearsals of _Théodora_ at the Porte St. Martin, Richepin
invariably accompanied Sarah Bernhardt to the theatre. This enraged
Victorien Sardou, for it was then and has since remained a matter of
unwritten theatrical law that one dramatic author should not visit the
rehearsals of another’s play.
Eventually Sardou made a scene one afternoon in the office of
Duquesnel, the manager. I happened to be present, having had a previous
appointment with Duquesnel.
Beside himself with anger at the slights she was constantly heaping
upon him, Sardou abused Sarah and Richepin, coupling their names in
language of considerable vigour.
Sarah, as it happened, was in an office next to that of Duquesnel, and
heard every word. Bounding forth, she rushed into Duquesnel’s office
and cried:
“I have heard all! You are animals and pigs! Richepin is an _être
délicieux_! I will not remain in your odious theatre another instant! I
refuse to play this pig’s piece!”--indicating Sardou, who was too much
astounded to say a word.
With that she flounced out of the theatre, leaving us in doubt as to
whether the play could continue.
On returning to her house, however, she was met by her maid, who said
to her:
“Monsieur Richepin has just been here and has taken away his things. He
has left madame a note.”
Sarah tore open the note feverishly. A cry of mingled rage and despair
escaped her. It was a note of adieu!
Immediately Sarah sat down at her writing-table and wrote to Sardou and
to Duquesnel:
“MY DEAR FRIENDS,
“I have reflected, you are quite right; Richepin after all is only
the latest of these _voyous_ whom I have put out of my door. All
shall be as you wish.
“SARAH.”
It was only later that we learned from Richepin the true story.
The one and only pantomime that Sarah Bernhardt ever played in was
_Pierrot, Assassin_, by Richepin.
This was a complete failure and only brought hisses and cat-calls
wherever it was produced, but Sarah insisted on retaining it on her
_répertoire_ so that Richepin could have the authors’ royalties. These
were considerable, for Sarah cannily would only produce the pantomime
once in each city, and her name alone was sufficient to fill the
theatre.
She took the thing all over Europe. When we were in Scandinavia
she would tell us that the play was not a success because: “These
Northerners do not understand the art of pantomime; it is an art of the
South; you will see how they will applaud us in the south of France!”
But when we played in Montpellier, the students were so indignant that
they demolished the interior of the theatre, and we had to steal out of
the city in closed cabs during the night in order to escape their wrath!
Since that day _Pierrot, Assassin_ has not been played.
All this time she had kept up her friendship with most of the people
who had surrounded her during her years at the Comédie Française in the
seventies, and among these was Gustave Doré, the immortal illustrator
of the Bible and of Dante’s “Inferno.”
Her romance with Gustave Doré was one of the really illuminating
episodes of her life.
One night she was playing Clorinde, in _L’Aventurière_. Doré, who was
in the audience, was so charmed that he sent her the next day the
original sketches he had made for the Gospel of St. John, considered
among his finest work. In reply, she wrote to him and asked him to come
to her dressing-room after the performance.
When Doré came, he had scarcely opened the door before she
characteristically threw herself into his arms and kissed him on both
cheeks. Doré was so astounded that, for a moment, he could not speak.
This was the first occasion on which he had seen Bernhardt at close
quarters, and in fact it was the first time he had ever been behind the
scenes of a theatre.
When Doré did not move nor speak, so great was his astonishment, Sarah
flew into a temper.
“Ah, you regret, you are sorry you sent me your pictures!” she stormed.
“You despise me.”
Doré threw himself at her feet, and kissed her satin slippers.
“Madame,” he said simply, “I do not permit myself to love a being so
far above me; _I adore!_”
This was not the beginning of their romance, however, for Sarah was
then held in ties of intimacy with Georges Clairin, Doré’s friend.
But Doré joined Sarah’s little intimate circle, and after the death
of Damala he ventured to reproach her for abandoning her painting and
sculpture.
“It is because I have no teacher,” she said sadly. She had quarrelled
with Clairin, who had gone to live in the Midi.
“Let me accompany you!” suggested Doré. “I cannot teach you, but we
will teach each other.”
Less than a week later it was common gossip in Paris that Gustave Doré
and Sarah Bernhardt experienced a tender passion for each other. It
is questionable, however, whether this was not a passing passion with
Sarah--although a very genuine one all the same.
Doré was a handsome man of singularly fine physique. He was quiet,
studious, and in his own field as famous as Sarah in hers.
He used to work on exquisite miniatures of Sarah, several of which are
now to be found in private collections.
Sarah and he spent one August sketching together in Brittany. They both
wore corduroy trousers and carried easels, and people who did not know
them took them for an old painter and his apprentice, never dreaming
that the “apprentice” was the most famous actress in France.
Sarah told me of an amusing incident that occurred during this painting
odyssey. They had been walking all day, and dusk found them near a
farmhouse. Entering, they asked for shelter for the night.
After dinner Doré was shown to a bedroom, and the painter supposed that
Sarah had been given another. But the next morning, on looking out of
the window, he was amazed to see her washing herself at the yard pump,
her clothes full of straw and filth. She was in a merry mood.
“They took me for your boy pupil, and gave me a bed with the cow in the
barn!” she told him.
During the first twenty-five years of her career, Sarah Bernhardt
earned considerably more than £200,000. Most of this was made after she
left the Comédie Française to become her own manager. At the Porte St.
Martin, when she leased it, her profits were 400,000 francs annually.
But she made her largest sums on tour. Altogether she brought back from
the United States alone considerably more than six million dollars.
But she was one of the most extravagant women who ever lived. She
nearly always spent more than her income, and, when she was in debt and
besieged by creditors (as often happened) she would organise another
Grand Tour of America, or Australia, or Brazil, or Europe--anywhere
that promised her sufficient money.
This was the real reason for her repeated tours, which made her
internationally famous.
She was still, despite the fact that she was advancing towards middle
age, wonderfully beautiful and full of high spirits.
In fact, these high spirits sometimes translated themselves into
practical jokes, the point of which we might be pardoned sometimes for
not seeing.
When I was a young girl, and none too rich, she saw me with my shoes
sodden from walking in the rain.
“Let me put them to dry,” she exclaimed, removing them gently. Then, in
a burst of her peculiar humour, she threw them in the fire! And I had
to walk home in my stockinged feet. She promised to buy me another pair
of shoes, but I am bound to say that she never did.
When Catulle Mendès gave Sarah the principal part in _Les Mères
Ennemies_, he was the friend of Augusta Holmes, the celebrated
composer. They were both poor, and with his first profits from the
piece Mendès bought his friend a green cloth gown, with long sleeves
and a high collar.
When Sarah saw the gown she cried: “What! A fine woman like you, to
hide your arms and shoulders! How ridiculous!”
And, seizing a pair of scissors, she cut off both sleeves and sliced
off the collar, while poor Augusta stood by, terrified to death. The
gown now had a square _decollété_, it was true, but it was completely
ruined.
When a male friend came to see her, wearing a tall hat, it was a
delight to Sarah to throw it on the ground and playfully dance upon it!
She was a trial to all who loved her, and she had tremendous difficulty
in keeping domestics. Despite this, she finally established a household
which remained with her for most of her later years.
Her secretary was Piron, formerly of the Opéra-Comique, who could play
on almost any instrument. Her personal maid was Dominga, a Buenos
Ayres dressmaker, who threw up her business to follow Sarah. Her valet
was Antonio, a Tunisian Jew who spoke five languages and who was
discovered by Sarah in far-away Chili. Her butler was Claude, and her
dresser was Félicie.
It was during a performance of Jeanne d’Arc at the Porte St. Martin, in
1890, a year after Damala’s death, that the accident, which eventually
cost her her right leg, happened to Sarah.
She injured the right knee in falling while on the stage, and during
the resultant illness, which was complicated by phlebitis, there was
much talk of amputation. (This did not come until 1915, however, and
for the time being Sarah’s limb was saved, thanks to the genius of the
famous Doctor Lucas-Championnière.)
An American impresario then in Paris (I think it was P. T. Barnum) went
to Sarah and said that he had heard her leg was to be cut off.
“I offer you 10,000 dollars for your limb for exhibition purposes,” was
his astounding proposition.
Sarah’s reply was to raise her skirts and to display wistfully the
member, which had shrunk a good deal owing to the injury.
“I am afraid that you would lose on your bargain,” she said. “Nobody
would believe that that was the leg of Sarah Bernhardt!”
In 1887 she made another Grand Tour of Europe, and in the following
year left for a tour of the United States and Canada, which she
repeated in 1889.
At the conclusion of this latter tour she took over the Porte St.
Martin, where she distinguished herself chiefly in the rôles of Jeanne
d’Arc and Cléopatra.
In 1893 she acquired the management of the Renaissance Theatre, and
in 1894 launched there another great dramatist--Jules Lemaître, whose
play, _Les Rois_, she starred in herself, and in which she obtained a
great triumph.
Her friendship with Jules Lemaître was one of the most abiding and
beautiful things in her life. It lasted from those successful days at
the Renaissance right up to his death, which occurred only a few years
before her own.
She helped and encouraged him in his dramatic work, appeared herself in
several of his plays, and, in his declining years, invited him for long
months to Belle Isle, her home on the shores of Brittany.
Jules Lemaître was the one man with whom she never quarrelled. His was
such a perfect character, so sweet a spirit, that a dispute with him
would have been impossible.
And now Sarah was growing old herself, even though her spirit was still
young. When she produced _Les Rois_ she was just fifty years old.
It was perhaps because her friendship with Jules Lemaître was a
spiritual association, rather than a love affair, that it lasted so
long. They adored each other, but their mutual interest lay in their
work together.
Never a play of Lemaître’s was produced or a criticism of his published
which Sarah did not see first; and never a literary effort of Sarah’s
saw print without first having been subjected to the kindly criticism
of Jules Lemaître.
It was a beautiful chapter in both their lives, and the last
sentimental episode for each. For, after she became fifty years old,
Sarah Bernhardt became more and more a worker, an apostle of energy,
and less and less the ardent lover.
Her affair with Edmond Rostand was the last great affair of passion in
the life of Sarah Bernhardt.
It merits a chapter to itself.