The first time Sarah Bernhardt’s name was publicly linked with that of
Edmond Rostand was prior to the production of _L’Aiglon_.
Sarah still pursued her studies as a sculptress, though not so
assiduously as before. Sometimes a whole year would go by without her
putting chisel to stone, and then she would have a burst of trenchant
energy and work furiously on a bust for days and nights together.
She was possessed of great determination, a trait which is generally
allied to obstinacy, and she was remarkable among her friends for
always finishing anything she started. She might, in the fits of temper
which now were becoming rarer, break her sculptures or rip up her
paintings after she had finished them, but she invariably completed
them first.
She liked to have famous men to pose for her. She seized on Victorien
Sardou, a man of great irritability--as demonstrated by his letters
reproduced in a previous chapter--and compelled the great dramatist to
sit for her twenty-one times, during which she completed her famous
bust of him in black marble. This is considered by many to have been
her finest work.
Occasionally, when people refused to sit for her or pleaded various
excuses, she would trick them into submission. This was the way she
managed to get Edmond Rostand and Maurice Maeterlinck to pose together.
Rostand and Maeterlinck were friends, and one night they accepted an
invitation to dine at the home of the Countess de B----, the occasion
being in honour of the President of the Republic.
Having some time to spare beforehand, the two men, who were then
not nearly so celebrated as Edmond Rostand was when he died, or as
Maeterlinck is now, called upon Sarah Bernhardt. It was three o’clock
in the afternoon, and the Countess’s dinner was fixed for nine o’clock
at night.
Nine o’clock came and passed, and then nine-thirty, and finally 10 p.m.
The Countess gave orders for the dinner to be served, at the same time
sending messengers to the homes of the absentees, to inquire if there
had been any accident.
To her astonishment the messengers came back with the news that nothing
had been seen or heard of the two poets since they had departed,
shortly after lunch, to take tea with Madame Sarah Bernhardt.
Containing her anger, the Countess returned to her guests and
explained that Rostand and Maeterlinck had been unavoidably detained.
Then she privately sent two young guests to Sarah’s house, with
strict instructions not to return without finding out whether the
distinguished and errant couple were still there.
They had no sooner reached the portals of Sarah’s home than the
_grille_ opened and out came Rostand and Maeterlinck, in a great hurry.
“The Countess and the President of the Republic have been waiting for
you for three hours!” cried one of the messengers.
It came out that, during their visit, Sarah had been seized with one of
her modelling fits and had persuaded them to sit to her. When it was
time for them to go, she had enticed them into a room she called her
studio, which had glass doors, and turned the key on them there.
When they turned round they perceived Sarah sitting on the other side
of the transparent doors, calmly continuing her modelling.
They rapped on the door, made faces at her, shouted, all to no purpose.
Sarah went on working with her clay, rounding the figures into shape.
“But the President is waiting for us!” cried Rostand finally through
the key-hole.
Sarah’s “voice of gold” came sonorously through the door:
“It is a far greater honour, messieurs, to be a prisoner in Sarah
Bernhardt’s hands, than to be a performing lion for the President of
France!”
Rostand’s courtship of Sarah Bernhardt remained one of the great
episodes of his career. Though Sarah refused him repeatedly, and he
afterwards married the famous Rosamonde, his friendship with the
actress continued, and she was at once his inspiration and his mentor,
as well as the co-author of his fame.
Sarah was the first woman invited to see little Maurice Rostand on the
day that he was born.
And when Sarah herself lay dying, Rosamonde and this same boy Maurice
were among the last to be admitted to her bedchamber.
Rostand used to write Sarah frantic letters, pleading his love for
her. He sang her praises everywhere he went, even in the cafés on the
boulevards where he and his fellow litterateurs were wont to gather.
“She is the Queen of Attitude, the Princess of Gesture, the Lady of
Energy,” he exclaimed once, in a poem dedicated to Sarah.
In 1896, after _L’Aiglon_ was produced, he wrote:
“The existence of Sarah Bernhardt remains the supreme marvel of the
nineteenth century.”
As was the case in all her love affairs, except that with Jules
Lemaître, her high-strung temperament clashed frequently with that of
Rostand, who was a wild and erratic youth.
He was in the habit of meeting Sarah and supping with her after the
theatre. Sometimes they would go for long drives together, Sarah
sitting and listening attentively, while Edmond declaimed his latest
poems.
It was thus she heard for the first time the verse of _L’Aiglon_, which
he and she created. She would criticise the dramatic construction of a
play, and was no mean authority on verse. Rostand admitted afterwards
that he owed everything to her shrewd coaching during those midnight
drives through the Champs Elysées and the Bois de Boulogne.
Once he arrived at the stage door of the new Sarah Bernhardt
Theatre--the old Opéra-Comique, which Sarah had leased from the City of
Paris--five minutes late. They had had something particularly important
to talk over in regard to a forthcoming production, and Sarah could not
brook delay.
She left him a short, imperious note stating that she would not produce
his play, since he took so little interest in it, and, moreover, she
did not wish to see him again!
The next morning, when Sarah left her house to take her accustomed ride
in the Bois, she discovered a haggard figure sitting on the doorstep.
It was Rostand. He had stayed on the doorstep all night, hoping by thus
humbling himself to be forgiven.
Sarah was struck by his devotion, but more by the fact that he was
shivering with fever. She took him into the house, and had him put to
bed in her private apartment, and for three days she ministered to him
while he recovered from a severe cold.
She would not allow a domestic to approach the bedroom, even carrying
Rostand his food and hot-water bottles with her own hands. During these
three days she did not go near the theatre--and nobody in Paris knew
where Rostand was!
It was during this sickness in Sarah’s house that Rostand conceived
(as he admitted afterwards) the first idea for _L’Aiglon_, which he
composed for and dedicated to Sarah. _L’Aiglon_, as everyone knows, is
the story of the King of Rome, Napoleon’s son, who dies in exile.
It had a moderate success when Sarah first produced it in her own
theatre at Paris, but was an absolute triumph in London and New York.
In the play Sarah takes the part of the young King of Rome.
To me she once said: “L’Aiglon is my favourite part. I think I like it
better than Tosca. At any rate, a poet wrote it with me in mind.”
“So did François Coppée write _Le Passant_, with you in mind!” I
reminded her.
Sarah was wistful. “Yes, that is true,” she answered. “Poor François.
He is a genius ... but--he is not Edmond Rostand!”
_L’Aiglon_ was not the first play of Rostand’s that Sarah produced.
In 1896 the door-keeper of the Renaissance came to her with a worried
look.
“There is a wild man outside who wants to see you, madame,” he said.
“Who is he?” asked Sarah.
“He said Jean Richepin had sent him--but I doubt it myself; he looks
like a savage.”
“Send your wild man to me,” commanded Sarah, laughingly, and turning to
me explained: “It is this boy Rostand, whom Jean spoke of. It appears
that he is a poet, and quite a good one.”
I made as if to go, but Sarah stayed me. “Wait, we will see what he
looks like!” she said.
It was thus that I was present at the first meeting between Sarah
Bernhardt and Edmond Rostand.
Sarah had her own fashion of greeting visitors. Her leg pained her if
she used it too much--the phlebitis persisted--so she would remain
seated. When anyone was announced--especially a stranger--she would
hold out her hand with a word of greeting, bid him sit down, and then
cup her chin on her hands and look at him steadily, without a trace of
expression.
Few men there were--or women either, for that matter--who could
withstand the hypnotic appeal of those glorious blue eyes, which at
fifty retained all the sparkle and fire of youth, together with the
mysterious inscrutability of approaching age!
Sarah received Edmond in her customary manner, with myself an
interested and, secretly, much amused spectator.
[Illustration: Mme. Bernhardt’s Sitting-room at her Last Home, 56,
Boulevard Pereire, Paris.
_Photo, Henri Manuel._]
]
Rostand sat down, placed his hat and gloves on the floor beside him,
and then turned to await Sarah’s instructions to proceed.
I saw then why the door-keeper had called him a “wild man.” His hair
was at least five inches long and was in the most indescribable tangle,
as though it had not been brushed for months. It was matted over his
forehead, on which beads of perspiration were standing.
Rostand turned and looked at Sarah. Sarah, chin on hands, was steadily
staring at him. It was an awkward moment for a young, aspiring poet!
Tremendously nervous, Rostand moistened his lips and twice tried to
speak.
“I----”
Sarah stared as before
“I----”
Sarah’s expression did not change.
Finally Rostand could stand it no longer. Seizing his hat and gloves
he rose precipitately and dashed from the room without having spoken a
word regarding his mission.
Sarah screamed with laughter.
“_Eh bien!_” she exclaimed. “So much for our young poet!”
But when she went out of the theatre she was met by her coachman, who
was in great agitation.
“If it please, madame,” he said, “there is a man sitting in your
carriage, and he won’t get out!”
A man sitting in her carriage! It was like a pagan mounting the steps
of an altar!
Sarah hastened outside. Sure enough, there was her carriage, and there
was a man in it. One look at his mass of hair and Sarah realised who he
was.
It was Rostand!
“Throw him out!” commanded Sarah, while we stood by aghast at this
sacrilege committed by an unknown poet.
Then Rostand to my amazement found his voice. He stood up in the
carriage and bowed to Sarah.
“I don’t wish to have to knock your coachman down a second time,” he
said, “so, madame, it will save time if I explain that I am going to
ride home with you!”
“_You_ are going to ride home with _me_!” said Sarah. For once even her
ready wit had forsaken her.
“I came here to read you a poem, and I am going to read it!” continued
Rostand firmly.
Sarah burst out laughing.
“So be it!” she cried cheerfully. “Jean told me that I should hear your
poem, and if you cannot read it to me anywhere except in my carriage,
why you may do it there!”
And she got into the carriage with him, and it drove off--much to our
amusement, of course.
But we were not astonished. Nothing that Sarah Bernhardt did had the
power to astonish us any more.
The poem which Rostand read to Sarah as they drove about in her
carriage--it was the first of a score of similar rides, for which
it established the precedent--was part of his play, _La Princesse
Lointaine_, one of the sweetest poetical dramas ever penned.
Sarah produced it six months later and it was a great success. In
fact, it made Rostand as a playwright, and paved the way for his
triumph in _L’Aiglon_.
He was enormously grateful to Sarah and his gratitude was the
foundation of his love for her.
Sarah’s association with the Rostands did not cease with the death of
the great Edmond. When he died he directed that if ever his famous
property, Arnaga, near Biarritz, was sold, Sarah Bernhardt should be
given the first opportunity to acquire it. But when it finally went
under the hammer it was bought by a South American, and this happened a
few weeks after Sarah died.
When it was first put up for auction there were no bidders, since the
reserve price had been set at two million francs.
“I am too poor even to purchase a lot in a cemetery,” Sarah said at
the time, and, in fact, she was at that moment having difficulties
over payments for work on the tomb built for herself at Belle Isle--a
tomb in which she will perhaps never lie because, five days before her
death, the property was sold. There is talk now that the purchasers,
who are transforming the property into a Bernhardt Museum, will
petition that her body may be brought to its ordained resting-place.
Sarah early recognised the budding genius in the boy Maurice Rostand,
son of Edmond. She encouraged him in every way, and she returned to
the stage after the Great War in order personally to appear in his _La
Gloire_, which is conceded by critics to be a masterpiece.
Maurice Rostand is a peculiar individual to look at, and there are
many stories about him; but there is no doubt about it--he is Edmond
Rostand’s son and a worthy successor of his great father. Maurice
Rostand is a genius. And Sarah Bernhardt was the first to recognise
genius in him, as she had been the first to recognise it in his father.
Let me read to you what Maurice Rostand wrote the day that Sarah
Bernhardt died:
“Since yesterday, Poesy and her Poets are in mourning. The muse of
Shakespeare and of Musset carries crêpe upon his shoulder of gold!
Phèdre has died a second time! And a poet feels in the shadows
about him a thousand wounded heroines who cry; and their immortal
verses, like useless bees, search in vain for lips whereon to rest!
“Permit me, however, to render homage to Her who has taken with her
to a radiant tomb all the lyricism of an epoch! Permit me to render
homage to the living poesy of Sarah Bernhardt!
“Yes, she herself was the _théâtre poétique_! The heroes of poets,
on the dangerous road of the centuries are in danger of succumbing,
and more than one disincarnated heroine would not reach the far
country without the helping hand of genius such as Hers.
“To affirm their existence, it is necessary from time to time that
a heart of fire and passion cause their passions and their pains to
live again. Lorenzaccio, the young débauché, for having one night
taken this voice of crystal, is launched to more than eternity! The
sister of Ariane and her great sob of _bête divine_ fills the world
more profoundly.
“The Poets are not so niggardly that they do not recognise to what
horizons a voice like that can hurl their songs. You knew it,
Musset? You knew it, my father!... Thou knowest it, my heart.
“I write on the first midnight of her death, her first glacial
night, when shaken by Her I have contracted from her passage an
insulation which is the proof itself of her astra. This insulation
the whole of an epoch has received, and the trace of her passage
has glorified the poets, even when she was not saying their verse.
The beauty and the genius of Sarah Bernhardt made the shadow of
Herself penetrate into all the arts she epitomised. Who knows in
what measure the genius of Gabriele d’Annunzio has not warmed
itself at that Great Flame? I have recognised in more than one of
these sisters of voluptuousness and of fever She who was Divinity
in _La Ville Morte_! One finds her everywhere. Here in a poem by
Swinburne; there in prose by Wilde, in an arabesque by Beardsley,
in a motif by Claude Debussy, in a song of Maeterlinck....
“Burn, immortal tapers, before her great Memory!”
Who shall say that this was not the voice of Edmond Rostand, living
again through the charmèd pen of his son?