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MODERN HEROINES SERIES
EDITED BY WARREN DUNHAM FOSTER
HEROINES OF THE
MODERN STAGE
MODERN HEROINES SERIES
EDITED BY WARREN DUNHAM FOSTER
_Now Ready_
HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS
HEROINES OF MODERN RELIGION
HEROINES OF THE MODERN STAGE
Each volume 12mo cloth
_Illustrated $1.50_
[Illustration: SARAH BERNHARDT]
HEROINES OF
THE MODERN STAGE
BY
FORREST IZARD
_ILLUSTRATED_
New York
STURGIS & WALTON
COMPANY
1915
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY
STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1915
PREFACE
The following pages give some account of those actresses who stand
out today as the most interesting to an English-speaking reader. The
Continental actresses included are those who gained international
reputations and belonged to the English and American stage almost as
much as to their own.
All actresses have been modern, in a sense, for the acting of female
rôles by women is distinctly a latter-day touch in that ancient
institution, the theatre.[1] Thus a book on modern actresses might
range from Elizabeth Barry to Mrs. Fiske. But while many volumes
already exist that serve well to keep alive the names of the
dead-and-gone heroines,[2] biographies of actresses whom we of today
have seen, are, in general, insufficient or inaccessible. That is
true even of such notable women as Sarah Bernhardt, Ada Rehan and
Mrs. Fiske; while accounts in English of such Continental actresses
as Duse and Réjane are altogether lacking. The author hopes that in
these chapters he has done something toward making better known the
careers of those actresses and of others who present themselves either
in vivid recollection or in the light of present day achievement. The
concluding chapter deals briefly with a number of American actresses of
the present, who, although not rising in all cases to the eminence or
popularity attained by those to whom separate chapters are given, yet
have made some distinct contribution to our stage.
The author’s thanks are due to Mr. Edwin F. Edgett for the loan of
material; to Mr. John Bouvé Clapp and to Mr. Robert Gould Shaw for the
use of the originals from which some of the illustrations were made;
and, for assistance of many kinds, to the editor of the series.
Boston, Massachusetts,
October, 1915.
F. I.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
CHAPTER
I SARAH BERNHARDT 3
II HELENA MODJESKA 52
III ELLEN TERRY 93
IV GABRIELLE RÉJANE 126
V ELEONORA DUSE 171
VI ADA REHAN 203
VII MARY ANDERSON 230
VIII MRS. FISKE 265
IX JULIA MARLOWE 299
X MAUDE ADAMS 324
XI SOME AMERICAN ACTRESSES OF TODAY 347
APPENDIX 368
BIBLIOGRAPHY 377
INDEX 381
ILLUSTRATIONS
SARAH BERNHARDT _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
HELENA MODJESKA 52
ELLEN TERRY 92
GABRIELLE RÉJANE 126
ELEONORA DUSE 170
ADA REHAN 202
MARY ANDERSON 230
MRS. FISKE 264
JULIA MARLOWE 298
MAUDE ADAMS 324
HEROINES OF THE MODERN STAGE
SARAH BERNHARDT
“_Sarah-Bernhardt, Officier d’Académie, artiste dramatique, directrice
du théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt, professeur au Conservatoire_;” so run the
rapid phrases of the French “Who’s Who.” And, it might have added:
“personality extraordinary, and woman of mystery.”
“The impetuous feminine hand that wields scepter, thyrsus, dagger,
fan, sword, bauble, banner, sculptor’s chisel and horsewhip--it is
overwhelming.” Thus the poet Rostand epitomized “the divine Sarah.”
Her career, he said, gives one the vertigo--it is one of the marvels
of the nineteenth century. And he might have added, of the twentieth,
for Bernhardt, who began her stage career at the time of our Civil
War, was only recently, at an amazing age, to be seen on the stage of
London and Paris. There are many who think, with William Winter,[3]
that she has been merely “an accomplished executant, an experienced,
expert imitator, within somewhat narrow limits, of the operations of
human passion and human suffering.” The fact remains, the woman has
been a genius of work and achievement, “the Lady of Energy,” who has
fairly earned the title of great actress. It is difficult to think of
any woman the light of whose fame has carried to the ends of the earth
in quite the same way. To be sure it has not always been from the lamp
of pure genius. There have been self-advertising, scandal, extravagant
eccentricity, to swell the general effect, but back of all this has
been the worker.[4]
She was born in Paris, at 265 _Rue St. Honoré_, October 23, 1844.[5]
Her blood is a mingling of French and Dutch-Jewish. Her real name is
Rosine Bernard, and she was the eleventh of fourteen children. Of
her father hardly anything can be learned. Sarah herself says that
when she was still a mere baby he had gone to China, but why he went
there she had no idea. Her mother was, by birth, a Dutch Jewess,
by sympathy a Frenchwoman, by habit a cosmopolitan; “a wandering
beauty of Israel,” forever traveling. As much because there was no
home, therefore, as because the French have a custom of banishing
infants from the household, Sarah spent her childhood in the care of
a foster-mother, first in the Breton country, near Quimperlé (where
she fell in the fireplace and was badly burned), then at Neuilly,
near Paris. Her mother came seldom to see her, though there seems to
have been affection, at least on the child’s side. It was a lonely
childhood--made worse by the high-strung, sensitive nature that was
Sarah’s from the beginning.[6]
When Sarah was seven she was sent away to boarding school at Auteuil,
where she says she spent two comparatively happy years. Her mysterious
father then sent orders that she was to be transferred to a convent.
“The idea that I was to be ordered about without any regard to my
own wishes or inclinations put me into an indescribable rage. I
rolled about on the ground, uttering the most heartrending cries. I
yelled out all kinds of reproaches, blaming mamma, my aunts, and Mme.
Fressard for not finding some way to keep me with her. The struggle
lasted two hours, and while I was being dressed I escaped twice into
the garden and attempted to climb the trees and throw myself into the
pond, in which there was more mud than water. Finally, when I was
completely exhausted and subdued, I was taken off sobbing in my aunt’s
carriage.”[7]
At the Augustinian convent at Grandchamp, Versailles, she was baptized
and confirmed a Christian. She became extravagantly pious and conceived
a passionate adoration of the Virgin. Nevertheless, she was fractious
and was more than once expelled.[8]
When she left the convent Sarah was a capricious, sensitive, religious
girl, who must indeed have constituted a problem for her mother. Sarah,
strangely enough, was herself strongly inclined to be a nun. But her
mother, who was a woman of the world and of means, had other plans and
provided as “finishing governess” for Sarah a Mlle. de Brabander. One
day, when she was fifteen, her fate was decided for her. At a family
council her own ambition to be a nun was voted down and the decision
was: “Send her to the _Conservatoire_.” Sarah had never even heard of
the famous school for actors of the government theatres. That same
evening she was taken to the theatre for the first time--the _Théâtre
Français_. _Brittanicus_ and _Amphitrion_ moved her profoundly, and
she left the theatre weeping, as much for the sudden shattering of her
cherished plan as from the effects of the plays.
Thus she began her studies at the _Conservatoire_ (1860) with no
love for the career chosen for her.[9] She was no beauty;--she was
decidedly thin, had kinky hair, and a pale face. But she worked
hard. Her extraordinary nervous energy and her intelligence had their
effect and when she left the _Conservatoire_ she had won two second
prizes.[10] The discernment of some of the judges[11] saw in her
something of the artist she was to be, and she immediately had a call
to the company of the _Comédie Française_. With the signing of her
contract came her resolve, that if the stage were to be her working
place, she would throw herself into her task with all her soul.
“_Quand-même_,”--in spite of all,--was already her motto,--she would,
in the face of any obstacle, win a place for herself.[12]
Though with wonderful success she has been busily pursuing that
object from that day to this, the beginnings of her career were
not promising. Her début (1862) in Racine’s _Iphigénie_ created no
particular comment. She remembers, however, that on that occasion, when
she lifted her long and extraordinarily thin arms, for the sacrifice,
the audience laughed.[13] Other parts fell to her, but she did not long
remain at the House of Molière. As other managers were later to learn,
Sarah cared little for agreements and contracts.
The occasion of her first desertion of the _Comédie_ was trivial
enough. Here at the great national theatre she expected to remain
always, but one day her sister trod on the gown of Mme. Nathalie,
another actress of the company, “old, spiteful and surly,” who in petty
anger shoved the girl aside. Sarah promptly responded by boxing the
ears of her elder colleague. Neither would apologize, and the quickly
achieved result was that the younger actress retired.
She remained away from the _Comédie Française_ for ten years, and it
was during this time that she laid the foundation of her fame. Brief
engagements at the _Gymnase_[14] and the _Porte St. Martin_ were
followed by an opportunity to join the company at the _Odéon_. MM.
Chilly and Duquesnel were the managers. The latter was young, kind
to Sarah, and discerning of her talents. As for Chilly, he was less
enthusiastic: “M. Duquesnel is responsible for you. I should not upon
any account have engaged you.”
“And if you had been alone, monsieur,” she answered, “I should not have
signed, so we are quits.”
Mlle. Bernhardt’s career--once she had launched herself upon
it--divides naturally into three periods: the six years (1866–1872)
at the _Odéon_, the playhouse of the Latin Quarter, “the theatre,”
she says, “that I have loved most”; another term (1872–1880) at the
_Française_; and her long career since, during which she has been her
own mistress, accepting engagements where it pleased her, managing
theatres of her own, and traveling over all the world.
Her first taste of success came when she played Zacharie in _Athalie_,
soon after she went to the _Odéon_. It fell to her to recite the
choruses, and the “_voix d’or_” won its first triumph. She was now
twenty-two. For four years, with plentiful interludes of temper and
temperament, she had been striving for success. Now, at the _Odéon_,
she worked and worked hard. “I was always ready to take any one’s place
at a moment’s notice, for I knew all the rôles.” Chilly, who at first
could see only her thinness[15] and not her ability, was brought round
to Duquesnel’s view of her. “I used to think,” she says again, “of my
few months at the _Comédie Française_. The little world I had known
there had been stiff, scandal-mongering, and jealous. At the _Odéon_
I was very happy. We thought of nothing but putting on plays, and we
rehearsed morning, afternoon, and at all hours, and I liked that very
much.”[16]
At the _Odéon_ Sarah soon became the favorite of the students of the
_Quartier_. Rather to the disgust of the older patrons of the house,
the students were indiscriminate in their appreciation of the young
actress, and applauded her indifferent work equally with her successes.
For successes she now began to have. With difficulty M. Chilly was
induced to consent to the production of Coppée’s one-act play _Le
Passant_. But so successful was it that it not only ran for a hundred
nights, but Bernhardt and the beautiful Mlle. Agar played it for
Napoleon and Eugénie at the Tuileries. In _Kean_, by Dumas, she was, by
all accounts, admirable.[17]
George Sand came to the _Odéon_ for the rehearsals of her play
_L’Autre_. Of her Bernhardt says: “Mme. George Sand was a sweet
charming creature, extremely timid. She did not talk much but smoked
all the time.”
In the midst of her term at the _Odéon_ came an astonishing episode
in Bernhardt’s career--her activities during the Franco-Prussian War
of 1870–71. The theatres were of course closed, but it was not in
her nature to sit still and do nothing. Therefore she sent her young
son[18] out of the city, and in the fall of 1870, after her own severe
illness, proceeded to establish an army hospital in the foyers of the
_Odéon_, with herself as its working head. With an executive ability
and a zeal characteristic but none the less remarkable, she not only
organized its commissariat, and kept all the records and accounts, but
herself acted as one of the nurses. The section of her autobiography
that deals with the siege of Paris and with her journey through the
enemy’s country to Hombourg and back that she might bring home her
family, will afford some future historian a graphic impression of one
of the saddest days in the history of Paris.
When the _Odéon_ reopened, in the fall of 1871, Sarcey, the great
critic, said of Sarah, who played (in _Jean-Marie_) a young Breton
girl: “No one could be more innocently poetic than this young
lady. She will become a great _comédienne_, and she is already an
admirable artist. Everything she does has a special savor of its
own. It is impossible to say whether she is pretty. She is thin, and
her expression is sad, but she has queenly grace, charm, and the
inexpressible _je ne sais quoi_. She is an artist by nature, and an
incomparable one. There is no one like her at the _Comédie Française_.”
At the end of 1871 Victor Hugo, who had been practically an exile
during the Empire, came back to France. His return, as it proved,
meant another turning point in Sarah’s life, for when the _Odéon_
decided to produce his _Ruy Blas_, she was selected, after a good
deal of bickering, as the Queen. Hugo she found, despite her strong
previous prejudice against him, “charming, so witty and refined, and so
gallant.”[19]
The play was produced on January 26, 1872. That night, in Bernhardt’s
own words, “rent asunder the thin veil which still made my future hazy,
and I felt that I was destined for celebrity. Until that day I had
remained the students’ little Fairy. I became then the elect of the
Public.” Hugo himself, on his knee, kissed her hands and thanked her.
M. Sarcey, who from the beginning was Bernhardt’s staunchest admirer
among the critics, praised her warmly: “No rôle was ever better adapted
to Mlle. Bernhardt’s talents. She possesses the gift of resigned and
patient dignity. Her diction is so wonderfully clear and distinct that
not a syllable is missed.”
The _Comédie Française_ now made overtures for her return to its
fold. Bernhardt at once accepted, which was wretchedly unfair to the
_Odéon_, for she owed much to Duquesnel. When in 1866 he persuaded
Chilly to take her on, she was comparatively unknown; now, in 1872, she
was rapidly becoming the talk of Paris. Her contract with the _Odéon_
had yet a year to run, but Sarah demanded, as the condition of her
remaining, an advance in the stipulated salary.[20] Chilly indignantly
refused; so Mlle. Bernhardt hurried away to the _Comédie_ and forthwith
signed her new contract. The _Odéon_ brought an action against her and
she had to pay a forfeit of six thousand francs.
This sudden change of scene is but one instance of the directness, not
to say unscrupulousness, of Bernhardt’s methods in advancing herself.
“_Quand-même_” it was to be, at any cost. If she had merely followed
her inclinations, however, she would probably have remained at the
_Odéon_, for she has often protested the attraction for her of the
scene of her first triumphs. The _Comédie_, on the other hand, had
never this appeal to her. As is easily understood, her imperiousness
and willfulness made her feel less at home at the more staid _Comédie_.
The other members of her company, with a few exceptions, were
unfriendly and jealous. Moreover she made almost a failure in her début
(in _Mlle. de Belle-Isle_), but this was due not to stage-fright, as
Sarcey guessed, but to her anxiety on seeing her mother, suddenly
taken ill, leave the theatre. Sarcey loyally championed her early
efforts, though he was often keenly critical also: “I fear,” he wrote
(apropos of _Dalila_), “that the management has made a mistake in
already giving Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt leading parts. I do not know
whether she will ever be able to fill them, but she certainly cannot
do so at present. She is wanting in power and breadth of conception.
She impersonates soft and gentle characters admirably, but her failings
become manifest when the whole burden of the piece rests on her fair
shoulders.” Other critics, particularly Paul de Saint-Victor, were
consistently hostile. She had in the company envious rivals who
inspired attacks on her, and she clashed frequently with M. Perrin, the
director of the theatre. With that indomitable persistence that is her
finest trait, however, she kept right on, and won her way to genuine
achievement. As Aricie in _Phèdre_ she made a secondary part notable.
Thus Sarcey: “There can be no doubt about it now. All the opposition to
Mlle. Bernhardt must yield to facts. She simply delighted the public.
The beautiful verses allotted to Aricie were never better delivered.
Her voice is genuine music. There was a continuous thrill of pleasure
among the entire audience.”
That she had thoroughly arrived was soon to be proved and re-proved.
Zaïre[21] was followed by Phèdre herself, Berthe in _La Fille de
Roland_, Doña Sol in _Hernani_, Monime in _Mithridate_, and revivals of
_Ruy Blas_ and _Le Sphinx_, each a personal triumph for the actress who
was so rapidly filling the eye of Paris.[22]
For Sarah Bernhardt had by now succeeded in making herself, if not a
universally acknowledged artist, at least a real Parisian celebrity.
It was not a reputation confined to the actress _per se_. Designedly or
not, Sarah set the tongues of Paris (and shortly of all Europe) wagging
by a continuous exhibition of eccentricity that amounts to a tradition.
To mention only what seem to be well authenticated manifestations of
her caprice: She kept a pearwood coffin at the foot of her bed, slept
in it and learned her parts in it. It is to be the veritable coffin
of her last resting place.[23] She kept as a further reminder of her
mortality a complete human skeleton in her bedroom. Years before she
had a tortoise as a household pet. She named it Chrysogère and had
a shell of gold, set with topazes, fitted to its back. Now she was
keeping two Russian greyhounds, a poodle, a bulldog, a terrier, a
leveret, a monkey, three cats, a parrot, and several other birds. Later
she had lions, and an alligator! She made ascents in a captive balloon
at the Exhibition and once in a balloon that was _not_ captive.[24]
Perrin was outraged by this caprice and tried to fine her for
“traveling without leave.” She wrote for the newspapers. She scorned
the fashions. She dabbled in painting and sculpture, and, particularly
with her chisel, her efforts were, if not noteworthy, at least
respectable. Indeed, a group sculpture won an honorable mention in the
Salon of 1876, though there were plenty to deny that it was really her
work. Her studiolike apartment was the rendezvous of all artistic Paris.
In 1879 her poetic, restrained, and generally admirable impersonation
of Doña Sol in _Hernani_ brought her general homage. On the night of
the one-hundredth performance Victor Hugo presided at a banquet in
her honor, and M. Sarcey, in behalf of her “many admiring friends,”
presented to her a necklace of diamonds.
When it was proposed, in 1879, that the _Comédie Française_ company go
to London, Sarah refused to go along unless she be made Associate “_à
parte entière_.”[25] Her proposal was rejected, and at a meeting of
the Committee M. Got represented the feeling that prevailed among the
directors of the theatre by crying: “Well, let her stay away! She is a
regular nuisance!” Sarah finally gave in, however, and in reward was
made “_Sociétaire à parte entière_.”[26]
On the first evening at the Gaiety, Bernhardt was to make her bow to
England in the second act of _Phèdre_. Just before she went on she
had one of her occasional bad attacks of stage fright, and could not
remember her lines. “When I began my part,” she wrote, “as I had lost
my self-possession, I started on rather too high a note, and when once
in full swing I could not get lower again; I simply could not stop.
I suffered, I wept, I implored, I cried out, and it was all real. My
suffering was horrible.” _The Telegraph_ next morning said: “Clearly
Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt exerted every nerve and fiber and her passion
grew with the excitement of the spectators, for when after a recall
that could not be resisted the curtain drew up, Mr. Mounet-Sully was
seen supporting the exhausted figure of the actress, who had won her
triumph only after tremendous physical exertion, and triumph it was,
however short and sudden.”
An American writer--probably Henry James--said at this time in the
_Nation_: “It would require some ingenuity to give an idea of the
intensity, the ecstasy, the insanity, as some people would say, of
curiosity and enthusiasm provoked by Mlle. Bernhardt.... She is not,
to my sense, a celebrity because she is an artist. She is a celebrity
because, apparently, she desires, with an intensity that has rarely
been equaled, to be one, and because all ends are alike to her.... She
has compassed her ends with a completeness which makes of her a sort of
fantastically impertinent _victrix_ poised upon a perfect pyramid of
ruins--the ruins of a hundred British prejudices and proprieties....
The trade of a celebrity, pure and simple, had been invented, I think,
before she came to London; if it had not been, it is certain that she
would have discovered it. She has in a supreme degree what the French
call the _génie de la réclame_--the advertising genius; she may,
indeed, be called the muse of the newspaper.”
But trouble was brewing, and the irrepressible Sarah was soon making
difficulties for her _confrères_. She insisted on her right to give
performances before private audiences on the nights she was not
appearing with the company. Perrin had flown into a rage when he
first heard of these performances, for it was the _Comédie’s_ chief
grievance against her that she _would not_ rest. There came a day in
London when Sarah sent word she was too tired to appear. A Saturday
audience had to be dismissed at the last moment; it was too late to
change the bill. A great commotion ensued among the company and in the
Paris press. So many and varied were the attacks on her that she was
on the point of resignation. She had brought to London a number of her
sculptures and paintings and gave an exhibition, selling a few pieces,
and entertaining at the gallery reception a group of aristocrats
and celebrities--Gladstone and Leighton among them. She made a trip
to Liverpool to buy more lions, and came back with a chetah, a wolf,
and a half dozen chameleons to add to her menagerie. The members of
the company thought she was ruining the dignity of “Molière’s House”;
and all manner of stories were told. “It was said,” she wrote, “that
for a shilling anyone might see me dressed as a man; that I smoked
huge cigars leaning on the balcony of my house; that at the various
receptions when I gave one-act plays, I took my maid with me for the
dialogue; that I practiced fencing in my garden, dressed as a _pierrot_
in white, and that when taking boxing lessons I had broken two teeth
for my unfortunate professor.” These stories were only less dreadful
than the tales told in Paris: that she had thrown a live kitten into
the fire, and poisoned two monkeys with her own hands!
As a matter of fact, it is probable that Sarah was finding irksome the
restrictions of the _Comédie_, was ambitious to earn more money and, as
anxious for her exit from the company as were her jealous _confrères_,
was only waiting for a chance to sever her contract. But contracts with
the _Française_ are not lightly broken. As Coquelin had told her: “When
one has the good fortune and the honor of belonging to the _Comédie
Française_ one must remain there until the end of one’s career.” She
had to watch her chance shrewdly.
Again returned to Paris, the company of the _Comédie_ revived, on
April 17, 1880, Augier’s _L’Aventurière_. From whatever cause--pique at
being assigned a part she disliked in a play she detested, a temporary
suspension of her usual power, or, as she says herself, illness that
prevented proper study of her part,--she failed rather miserably.
Even the usually indulgent Sarcey said: “Her Clorinde was absolutely
colorless”; and the other critics, to a man, wrote scathing reviews.
Sarah saw her chance, as she thought, and determined that this would be
her last performance at the _Comédie_. The morning after the fiasco she
wrote to Perrin:
“_Monsieur l’Administrateur_:
“You made me play before I was ready. You gave me only eight
stage rehearsals, and there were only three full rehearsals of
the piece. I could not make up my mind to appear under such
conditions, but you insisted upon it. What I foresaw has come
to pass, and the result of the performance has even gone beyond
what I expected. One critic actually charges me with playing
Virginie in _L’Assommoir_ instead of _L’Aventurière_! May
Emile Augier and Zola absolve me! It is my first rebuff at the
_Comédie_, and it shall be my last. I warned you at the dress
rehearsal. You have gone too far. I now keep my word. When you
receive this letter I shall have left Paris. Be good enough,
Monsieur l’Administrateur, to accept my resignation as from
this moment.
Apr. 18, 1880. SARAH BERNHARDT.”
An immense commotion at once arose, as if some tremendous political
upheaval had occurred. Sarah took train and disappeared in the
country, just as on a similar occasion, years before, she had suddenly
gone off to Spain. The press, her fellow players, and the author of the
play all poured upon her head a shower of abuse. M. Sarcey prophesied:
“She had better not deceive herself. Her success will not be lasting.
She is not one of those _artistes_ who can bear the whole weight of a
piece on their own shoulders, and who require no assistance to hold the
public attention.”[27] The _Comédie_ took legal action against her,
and a few months later, when the suit was tried, Sarah was formally
deprived of her standing as _sociétaire_, of her portion of the reserve
fund, amounting to more than eight thousand dollars, and in addition
had to pay the _Française_ damages of twenty thousand dollars. She
hadn’t the money, but she soon earned it, on her first American tour.
So ended, for good and all, Bernhardt’s connection with the government
theatres; so abruptly did she turn a corner in her remarkable career.
From her retirement Sarah announced, absurdly enough, that she would
renounce the stage, and live by painting and sculpture, for these, she
said, brought her thirty thousand francs ($6,000) a year. As a matter
of fact, within two weeks she signed a contract with Henry E. Abbey,
who post-haste crossed the ocean for the purpose, to go to America. His
English agent, Jarrett, had long been importuning her to go. Now she
was glad to accept.[28]
Sarah’s wanderings now began--those wanderings that have carried her
up and down the world, made her name familiar everywhere, brought her
riches and (in William Winter’s sonorous phrase) “such adulation and
advocacy as have seldom been awarded to even the authentic benefactors
of human society.” First she played a month in London, giving the
pieces she was preparing for the American tour, and scoring a
tremendous success, artistic, financial and social. A newspaper writer
said at this time: “It has been said here that English society is not
so eager this season to make her a social goddess as it was last; but
it would hardly be possible for a woman to be more thoroughly besieged
than is Sarah--that is the name by which people generally fondly call
her. To see her is almost as difficult as to see the Queen--I dare say
for people not connected with the artistic world even more so. Sarah
lives very comfortably--even luxuriously--and entertains lavishly. It
seems to me that the only lack of attention that she could possibly
complain of is that the Queen has not yet left her card, and that is a
complaint she must share with many people.”
To her amazement the Paris critics followed her to London, and praised
her extravagantly. Sarcey personally tried to induce her to return to
Paris, and M. Perrin sent Got, the _doyen_ of the _Comédie_, on the
same errand. Sarah refused; she was enjoying her freedom and her large
earnings. She went to Belgium and then to Denmark. At Copenhagen she
brought a storm about her ears by a gratuitous affront to the German
Ambassador to Denmark, Baron Magnus. At a dinner in her honor he
gallantly proposed a health to “_la belle France_.” Sarah was at once
on her feet, in a theatrical mood, mindful of the smarts that lingered
from the war of 1870–1871, and much impressed with her own importance.
“I suppose, _Monsieur l’Embassadeur de Prusse_,” she cried, “you mean
the _whole_ of France.” This obvious reference to Alsace-Lorraine
put the amiable Baron to confusion, broke up the dinner, threw
consternation into the French diplomats on duty in Copenhagen, and
enraged Bismarck. It is only fair to say that Sarah was genuinely sorry
for her impetuous “break.”
Before sailing for America, Sarah was prevailed upon to undertake
a month’s provincial tour in France--something she had never done.
She appeared in Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Lyons and Geneva.
Everywhere enthusiasm for her ran high. “Medals bearing her image and
superscription, Sarah Bernhardt bracelets and collars, photographs
and biographies were sold in the streets. At Lyons the Khedive’s son
unsuccessfully offered £80 for a stage-box.”[29]
On October 16, 1880, Mlle. Bernhardt sailed for New York. On November
8, at Booth’s Theatre, she made her first appearance in America in
_Adrienne Lecouvreur_, which, with much success, she had added to her
repertoire since leaving the _Comédie_.[30] Her triumph was immediate.
She had been told that New York would receive her coldly. At the end of
the play, however, “there was quite a manifestation and everyone was
deeply moved,” while after the play a large crowd serenaded and cheered
before her hotel. Sarah had been put on her mettle, and, as always, she
did her best in the face of possible opposition. And these ovations
repeated themselves in each city, both in the United States and in
Canada.
The Bishop of Montreal took it upon himself to condemn Bernhardt, her
company, her plays, the authors and French literature in general. As
if in reply to his utterances, the public flocked to see Sarah. As is
usual with such strictures, the Bishop had given the best possible
advertising[31] and each night Sarah’s sleigh was dragged by cheering
men.
Wherever she went, her astute managers saw to it that the Bernhardtian
advertising tradition was maintained: She went to Menlo Park to call
on Thomas A. Edison; at Boston she visited a captive live whale
in the harbor, and stood (and fell!) upon its back; in Canada she
visited a tribe of Iroquois; at Montreal she ventured on the ice in
the St. Lawrence and put her life in peril; visiting the Colt factory
at Springfield, Massachusetts, she fired off some newly invented
cannon;--“it amused me very much without procuring me any emotion,”
she wrote; at Chicago she witnessed the slaughtering of pigs at the
stock-yards; in St. Louis her jewelry was exhibited in a store window;
at Niagara she again endangered her life by getting herself into an
awkward place on the ice bridge below the falls.
Her object was accomplished, at all events. She had won in America
a new fame and a much needed fortune. She had earned more than one
hundred and eighty thousand dollars. She was now able to pay her debt
to the _Française_, and had a comfortable sum left. And her return
to France was a veritable return from Elba. Her vessel was met by
scores of small boats, gay with welcoming flags, and the wharves held
thousands of people shouting: “_Vive_ Sarah Bernhardt!” Her first
performance in France of _La Dame aux Camélias_, at Havre in May, 1881,
was “a perfect triumph.”
It is startling to reflect that a woman who thus reached the zenith of
her career a generation ago is still a working actress. What a triumph
for the frail physique and the dauntless will! It is worth while to get
a picture of her at about the time of her American tour, when she was
thirty-six years old. A correspondent who visited her in London wrote:
“I never was more agreeably disappointed in the appearance of a person
than when Sarah smilingly and merrily tripped into the room. She looked
infinitely fresher, brighter and prettier than I had ever seen her on
the stage. Her photographs are perfect caricatures--every one of them.
They give no idea of those wonderfully clear, translucent, great blue
eyes, with their now soft and melting and now keen and penetrating
glance; of her fresh and fair complexion, which on the stage is hidden
under a horrid mask of thick paint; of her beautiful light blond hair,
which lacks just a shade of being golden and is curled in the most
graceful fashion; of her tender and sensitive mouth, the slightest
motion of which is full of character and expression. I had never
considered her pretty. I now, after a most careful and painstaking
inspection, decidedly thought her so. She was charmingly dressed, too,
and her thinness of person, which is so generally marked, but which
she ridicules herself, was most artistically disguised. The waves of
lace and ruffles which fell about her neck appeared to hide a bust
worthy of Diana herself.”
Other contemporary accounts show that those who visited her at her
studio found her clad in a gray or white flannel suit of masculine
garments,--jacket, trousers, necktie and all, “looking something like
a thirteen-year-old boy.” Though Sarah performed wonders in the way
of self-advertising, more than one observer has noticed that she had
a certain natural dignity that was not altogether inconsistent with a
rather rollicking playfulness. “Her words are those of a lady,” wrote
one, “and her enunciation, though rapid, beautifully distinct.” She has
always been eminently hospitable.
In the engaging phrase of one of her biographers,[32] “Marriage was the
only eccentricity that Sarah had not yet perpetrated.” In the spring of
1882 she remedied this deficiency by marrying a member of her company,
a Greek named Damala, or, as he was known on the stage, Daria. Sarah
had been proceeding up and down Europe (always patriotically excepting
Germany), playing in France, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway,
Russia, Italy, Austria and Spain, everywhere with immense success.[33]
In the midst of this tour, quite unexpectedly (April, 1882), came the
announcement of the marriage. In order to have the ceremony performed
in London, she had traveled from Naples, and then returned to Spain to
resume the tour.[34] It was the talk of the day that the reason for
Sarah’s sudden marriage and for the selection of London as the scene
of the ceremony, was not only her passing infatuation for Damala, but
also a wish to propitiate English Puritanism. For a tour of England and
Scotland soon followed. The marriage was not a huge success, however.
It lasted not more than a year.
The mere statement of Bernhardt’s wanderings is sufficiently
astonishing and is one proof of her wonderful vitality. In 1886, a tour
that lasted more than a year took her to Mexico, Brazil, Chile, the
Argentine,[35] the United States and Canada. Two years later she acted
in Constantinople, Cairo and Alexandria, besides most of the European
countries. In the early part of 1891 she left Europe for two years
and played not only in North and South America, but this time as far
afield as Australia. Sarah has been a cosmopolitan figure, if there
ever was one. As the land of readily won dollars, the United States has
naturally been much favored; for beginning in 1880, Bernhardt has made
no less than nine tours in America.[36]
Like a number of actors of the other sex, but almost alone among
actresses, Bernhardt has dabbled in the management of theatres. Soon
after her first American tour, she assumed control of the _Ambigu_
in Paris. If she had acted in her own theatre (as later she did) her
business venture might have succeeded. As it was, she was acting
_Fédora_ at the _Vaudeville_, and later, with only moderate success, in
Holland and Belgium. The _Ambigu_ languished. In the meantime, Sarah
had spent all her money. Finding herself in straits, she auctioned her
jewels, and realized handsomely on them. It was an event in Paris, and
the sale produced no less than thirty-five thousand dollars.
Her next venture in management was more successful. In 1883, on behalf
of her son, she bought a partnership in the _Porte St. Martin_, and
produced _Frou-Frou_ there for the first time in Paris. Her régime
at this house was interrupted by the long tour begun in 1886, but
continued, under the prosperity shed by her own presence, until 1893,
when she bought the _Renaissance_. Since that day she has owned her own
theatre, until 1899 at the _Renaissance_, and since then at the more
commodious _Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt_, her renaming of the _Théâtre des
Nations_.
When Bernhardt went to America for the first time she had in her
company an actress named Marie Colombier. For reasons that are
difficult to determine, this woman conceived a passionate hatred
of Sarah and on her return to France prepared, or had prepared for
her,[37] a thinly disguised pseudo-biography of Bernhardt which sold in
enormous numbers under the name _Les Memoires de Sarah Barnum_. This
pamphlet subjected Bernhardt to miscellaneous ridicule and abuse.
Although on the whole false, parts of it may have been true enough
to penetrate the armor against gossip that Sarah schooled herself to
wear. At any rate, she was furiously angry. When the book had been in
circulation long enough to give her action its proper background and
advertising value, Bernhardt one day turned up at Mme. Colombier’s
apartment, accompanied by her son and M. Jean Richepin, and armed with
a horsewhip. The party forced themselves in, and Sarah, great actress,
proceeded to chase her detractor about the place, beating her soundly
with the whip. A similar incident occurred at Rio de Janeiro in 1886.
Mme. Noirmont, a member of the company, one day “went for” Sarah with
strong language and the flat of her hand. Sarah was at first content
with the woman’s arrest, but one evening, between the acts, her desire
for revenge got the better of her, and Mme. Noirmont was, in her turn,
thoroughly horsewhipped. The cause of these (at the time) world famous
ructions, which are now important only--if at all--as shedding light on
Sarah’s frail humanity, has always remained shrouded in mystery.
Further proof that the “divine Sarah” was after all very human was
furnished in 1907 when she published a volume of reminiscences.[38]
William Winter’s estimate of this book is characteristic; it contains,
he says: “some passages of interest, but, as a whole, it is diffuse,
flamboyant, and artificial,--an eccentric contribution to theatrical
annals, mottled over by affectation, egregious vanity, and the
pervasive insincerity of an inveterate self-exploiter.” It would be
juster to say that the book shows in many places a more likable woman
than the eccentric celebrity was supposed to be, and that it contains
but few passages that are _not_ of interest. At any rate, it shows
Sarah to be, after all, in many respects like us commonplace people.
Whatever hostility she may have met in her earlier days, Bernhardt long
ago won the unqualified homage of her countrymen. To them she became
a cherished national institution, the great actress of her time. “The
great and only Sarah” is the phrase of the once scoffing Sarcey. “I am
not quite sure,” wrote Lemaître in 1894, “whether Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt
can say ‘How do you do?’ like any ordinary mortal. To be herself she
must be extraordinary, and then she is incomparable.” “You cannot
praise her for reciting poetry well,” said M. Theodore de Banville, a
poet learned in metres and rhythms; “she is the muse of poetry itself.
A secret instinct moves her. She recites poetry as the nightingale
sings, as the wind sighs, and as the water murmurs.”
“Her acting is the summit of art,”--again Sarcey--“our grandfathers
used to speak with emotion of Talma and Mlle. Mars. I never saw either
the one or the other, and I have barely any recollection of Rachel,
but I do not believe that anything more original and more perfect than
Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt’s _Phèdre_ has ever been seen in any theatre.”
To take this view of Sarah one must, perhaps, be a Frenchman. The
Sarcey of America, William Winter, certainly could not take it. With
what may be termed the utilitarian Puritanism that seeks in the
theatre to be “benefited, cheered, encouraged, ennobled, instructed,
or even rationally entertained,” he could see in Bernhardt’s art only
an exhibition of morbid eccentricity. Mr. Winter, here as elsewhere,
has been made intolerant of much in the institution he has served and
honored by his insistence on “intrinsic grandeur” in its characters.
He is always looking for “the woman essentially good and noble,”
whereas the modern drama has as one of its most cherished prerogatives
its right to portray mixed characters,--often women whose “essential
goodness” is mingled with much human frailty.
Fairly enough, however, according to his lights, does Mr. Winter
specify and define Bernhardt’s peculiar merits: “They are, in brief,
the ability to elicit complete and decisive dramatic effect from
situations of horror, terror, vehement passion, and mental anguish;
neatness in the adjustment of manifold details; evenly sustained
continuity; ability to show a woman who seeks to cause physical
infatuation and who generally can succeed in doing so; a woman in
whom vanity, cruelty, selfishness, and animal propensity are supreme;
a woman of formidable, sometimes dangerous, sometimes terrible mental
force.”
Not all of Madame Bernhardt’s impersonations, however, fall within
Mr. Winter’s proscribed class. She has at times shown a startling
propensity for breaking into new and strange fields. Her _Jeanne d’Arc_
(1890), a genuine success, was certainly not a “morbid eccentric.” “It
is impossible to make _Hamlet_ Parisian,” but, in 1899, Sarah played
_Hamlet_, to the satisfaction of the French at least. “She never did
anything finer,” said Rostand. “She makes one understand Hamlet, and
understand him beyond the possibility of a doubt.”[39] A year later
she was playing Reichstadt, the son of Napoleon, in _L’Aiglon_, an
impersonation that even Mr. Winter admitted “was one of beautiful
symmetry.” And of recent years Sarah has threatened--though as yet she
has not accomplished--the acting of Mephistopheles in _Faust_.
When Bernhardt was in London in 1895, George Bernard Shaw was in the
midst of his career as the dramatic critic of the _Saturday Review_,
serving a three-year term of what he called his slavery to the
theatre. He observed Sarah with none too sympathetic eyes, but what
he said shows, under his purposefully irritating exterior, the shrewd
critical insight that makes the “Dramatic Opinions and Essays” one of
the soundest books of theatrical comment, as well as one of the most
readable:
“Madame Bernhardt has the charm of a jolly maturity, rather spoilt and
petulant, perhaps, but always ready with a sunshine-through-the-clouds
smile if only she is made much of. Her dresses and diamonds, if
not exactly splendid, are at least splendacious; her figure, far
too scantily upholstered in the old days, is at its best; and her
complexion shows that she has not studied modern art in vain.... She
is beautiful with the beauty of her school, and entirely inhuman and
incredible. But the incredibility is pardonable, because, though it
is all the greatest nonsense, nobody believing in it, the actress
herself least of all, it is so artful, so clever, so well recognized
a part of the business, and carried off with such a genial air, that
it is impossible not to accept it with good-humor. One feels, when
the heroine bursts on the scene, a dazzling vision of beauty, that
instead of imposing on you, she adds to her own piquancy by looking
you straight in the face, and saying, in effect: ‘Now who would ever
suppose that I am a grandmother?’ That, of course, is irresistible;
and one is not sorry to have been coaxed to relax one’s notions of the
dignity of art when she gets to serious business and shows how ably she
does her work. The coaxing suits well with the childishly egotistical
character of her acting, which is not the art of making you think
more highly or feel more deeply, but the art of making you admire her,
pity her, champion her, weep with her, laugh at her jokes, follow her
fortunes breathlessly, and applaud her wildly when the curtain falls.
It is the art of finding out all your weaknesses and practicing on
them--cajoling you, harrowing you, exciting you--on the whole, fooling
you. And it is always Sarah Bernhardt in her own capacity who does this
to you. The dress, the title of the play, the order of the words may
vary; but the woman is always the same. She does not enter into the
leading character: she substitutes herself for it.”
Where a more tolerant judgment would proclaim Sarah’s inalterable
romanticism, Mr. Shaw, whose passion for truth and realism leave
him little room for the sort of truth and reality there may be in
the romantic, sees only the tricks of her trade: “Every year Madame
Bernhardt comes to us with a new play, in which she kills somebody
with any weapon from a hairpin to a hatchet; intones a great deal of
dialogue as a sample of what is called ‘the golden voice,’ to the
great delight of our curates, who all produce more or less golden
voices by exactly the same trick; goes through her well-known feat
of tearing a passion to tatters at the end of the second or fourth
act, according to the length of the piece; serves out a ration of the
celebrated smile; and between whiles gets through any ordinary acting
that may be necessary in a thoroughly businesslike and competent
fashion. This routine constitutes a permanent exhibition, which is
refurnished every year with fresh scenery, fresh dialogue, and a fresh
author, whilst remaining itself invariable. Still, there are real
parts in Madame Bernhardt’s repertory which date from the days before
the traveling show was opened; and she is far too clever a woman, and
too well endowed with stage instinct, not to rise, in an off-handed,
experimental sort of way, to the more obvious points in such an
irresistible new part as Magda.” On the whole, Shaw is something
less than fair to Sarah. But one cannot deny him an appreciative
chortle when he speaks of her “dragging from sea to sea her Armada of
transports.”