



Produced by Dianna Adair, Jonathan Ingram, Josephine
Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net.








[Illustration: SARAH BERNHARDT, AT THE AGE OF TWELVE, AND HER MOTHER.

_From an Unpublished Photograph by C. Robert, Paris._]




THE STRAND MAGAZINE.

Vol. xxvii.      APRIL, 1904.       No. 160.




_The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt._

Copyright, 1904, by George Newnes, Limited.

     [These Memoirs, written by the greatest actress of our
     time, will give not only the story of her career in the
     theatrical world, but also in social life, in which she
     has, of course, met nearly all the celebrated people of
     the day, from Royalties downwards, and will be found
     throughout of the most striking interest to all classes
     of readers.]


CHAPTER I.--CHILDHOOD.

My mother was fond of travelling: she would go from Spain to England, from
London to Paris, from Paris to Berlin, and from there to Christiania; then
she would come back, embrace me, and set out again for Holland, her native
country. She used to send my nurse clothing for herself and cakes for me.
To one of my aunts she would write: "Look after little Sarah; I shall
return in a month's time." A month later she would write to another of her
sisters: "Go and see the child at her nurse's; I shall be back in a couple
of weeks."

[Illustration: MME. SARAH BERNHARDT'S DEDICATORY LETTER.

SPECIALLY WRITTEN FOR THIS MAGAZINE.

"Je suis heureux de dedier le premier chapitre de mes Memoires au peuple
anglais, qui, le premier de tous les peuples etrangers, m'a accueillie avec
une si grande bienveillance qu'il m'a fait croire en moi.--SARAH BERNHARDT,
Paris, 1904."

TRANSLATION.--"I am pleased to dedicate the first chapter of my Memoirs to
the English people, who, first among all foreign nations, welcomed me with
such great kindness that they made me believe in myself."]

My mother's age was nineteen; I was three years old, and my two aunts were
seventeen and twenty years of age; another aunt was fifteen, and the eldest
was twenty-eight, but the last one lived at Martinique, and was the mother
of six children. My grandmother was blind, my grandfather dead, and my
father had been in China for the last two years. I have no idea why he had
gone there.

My youthful aunts always promised to come to see me, but rarely kept their
word. My nurse hailed from Brittany and lived near Quimperle, in a little
white house with a low thatched roof, on which wild gillyflowers grew.
That was the first flower which charmed my eyes as a child, and I have
loved it ever since. Its leaves are heavy and sad-looking, and its petals
are made of the setting sun.

Brittany is a long way off, even in our present epoch of velocity. In those
days it was the end of the world. Fortunately my nurse was, it appears, a
good, kind woman, and, as her own child had died, she had only me to love.
But she loved after the manner of poor people, when she had time.

One day, as her husband was ill, she went into the fields to help gather in
potatoes; the over-damp soil was rotting them, and there was no time to be
lost. She left me in charge of her husband, who was lying on his Breton
bedstead suffering from a bad attack of lumbago. The good woman had placed
me in my high chair, and had been careful to put in the wooden peg which
supported the narrow tablet for my toys. She threw a fagot in the grate,
and said to me in Breton language (until the age of four I only understood
Breton), "Be a good girl, Milk Blossom." That was my only name at the time.
When she had gone I tried to withdraw the wooden peg which she had taken so
much trouble to put in place. Finally I succeeded in pushing aside the
little rampart. I wanted to reach the ground, but--poor little me!--I fell
into the fire, which was burning joyfully.

[Illustration: SARAH BERNHARDT'S HOME IN BRITTANY WHEN SHE WAS A CHILD.

_From a Photo._]

The screams of my foster-father, who could not move, brought in some
neighbours. I was thrown, all smoking, into a large pail of fresh milk.