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SARAH BERNHARDT


[Illustration: Mme. Sarah Bernhardt.]




  SARAH BERNHARDT

  BY
  JULES HURET

  WITH A PREFACE BY
  EDMOND ROSTAND

  TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY
  G. A. RAPER


  _WITH FIFTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS_


  LONDON
  CHAPMAN & HALL, LTD.
  1899




  RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
  LONDON & BUNGAY.




PREFACE


MY DEAR HURET,

You have given me an attack of vertigo. I have been reading your
biography of our illustrious friend. Its rapid, nervous style, its
accumulation of dates and facts, its hurried rush of scenery and events
flying past as though seen from an express train, all help to attain
what I imagine must have been your object--to give the reader vertigo.
I have got it.

I knew all these things, but I had forgotten them. They are so many
that no one even attempts to reckon them up. We are accustomed to
admire Sarah. “An extraordinary woman,” we say, without at all
realizing how true the remark is. And when we find ourselves suddenly
confronted with an epic narrative such as yours; with such a series of
battles and victories, expeditions and conquests, we stand amazed.
We expected that there was more to tell than we knew, but not quite
so much more! Yes, here is something we had quite forgotten, and here
again is something more! All the early struggles and difficulties and
unfair opposition! All the adventures and freaks of fancy! Twenty
triumphs and ten escapades on a page! You cannot turn the leaves
without awakening an echo of fame. Your brain reels. There is something
positively alarming about this impetuous feminine hand that wields
sceptre, thyrsus, dagger, fan, sword, bauble, banner, sculptor’s
chisel, and horsewhip. It is overwhelming. You begin to doubt. But
all this is told us by Huret, or, in other words, by History, and we
believe. No other life could ever have been so full of activity. The
poet I was used to admire in her the Queen of Attitude and the Princess
of Gesture; I wonder now whether the other poet I am ought not to still
more admire in her the Lady of Energy.

What a way she has of being both legendary and modern! Her golden hair
is a link between her and fairyland, and do not words change into
pearls and diamonds as they fall from her lips? Has she not worn the
fairy’s sky-blue robe, and is not her voice the song of the lark at
heaven’s gate? She may be an actress following an _impresario_, but she
is none the less a star fallen from the sky of the Thousand and One
Nights, and something of the mysterious blue ether still floats about
her. But just as the enchanted bark gives way to the great Atlantic
liner, just as the car drawn by flying frogs and the carriage made
out of a pumpkin vanish before the Sarah Bernhardt saloon-car, so in
this story of to-day, intelligence, independence, and intrepidity
have replaced the miraculous interventions in the tales of long ago.
This heroine has no protecting fairy but herself. Sarah is her own
godmother. Inflexible will is her only magic wand. To guide her through
so many strange and wonderful events to her final apotheosis, she has
no genius but her own.

It seems to me, Jules Huret, that the life of Mme. Sarah Bernhardt will
perhaps form the greatest marvel of the nineteenth century. It will
develop into a legend. To describe her tours round the world, with
their ever-changing scenes and actors, their beauties and absurdities,
to make the locomotives and steamers speak, to portray the swelling of
seas and the rustling of robes, to fill up the intervals of heroic
recitative with speaking, singing, shouting choruses of poets, savages,
kings, and wild animals: this would need a new Homer built up of
Théophile Gautier, Jules Verne, and Rudyard Kipling.

All this, or something like it, courses through my brain while my
attack of giddiness wears off. Now I feel better; I am myself again,
and I try to decide what to say to you, my dear friend, in conclusion.
After reflection, here it is--

I have had an attack of vertigo. There is no doubt about that. But
all these things that I have known only in the telling--all these
journeys, these changing skies, these adoring hearts, these flowers,
these jewels, these embroideries, these millions, these lions, these
one hundred and twelve _rôles_, these eighty trunks, this glory, these
caprices, these cheering crowds hauling her carriage, this crocodile
drinking champagne--all these things, I say, which I have never seen,
astonish, dazzle, delight, and move me less than something else which I
have often seen: this--

A brougham stops at a door; a woman, enveloped in furs, jumps out,
threads her way with a smile through the crowd attracted by the
jingling of the bell on the harness, and mounts a winding stair;
plunges into a room crowded with flowers and heated like a hothouse;
throws her little beribboned handbag with its apparently inexhaustible
contents into one corner, and her bewinged hat into another; takes
off her furs and instantaneously dwindles into a mere scabbard of
white silk; rushes on to a dimly-lighted stage and immediately puts
life into a whole crowd of listless, yawning, loitering folk; dashes
backwards and forwards, inspiring every one with her own feverish
energy; goes into the prompter’s box, arranges her scenes, points
out the proper gesture and intonation, rises up in wrath and insists
on everything being done over again; shouts with fury; sits down,
smiles, drinks tea and begins to rehearse her own part; draws tears
from case-hardened actors who thrust their enraptured heads out of
the wings to watch her; returns to her room, where the decorators are
waiting, demolishes their plans and reconstructs them; collapses, wipes
her brow with a lace handkerchief and thinks of fainting; suddenly
rushes up to the fifth floor, invades the premises of the astonished
costumier, rummages in the wardrobes, makes up a costume, pleats and
adjusts it; returns to her room and teaches the figurantes how to
dress their hair; has a piece read to her while she makes bouquets;
listens to hundreds of letters, weeps over some tale of misfortune,
and opens the inexhaustible little chinking handbag; confers with an
English perruquier; returns to the stage to superintend the lighting of
a scene, objurgates the lamps and reduces the electrician to a state
of temporary insanity; sees a super who has blundered the day before,
remembers it, and overwhelms him with her indignation; returns to her
room for dinner; sits down to table, splendidly pale with fatigue;
ruminates her plans; eats with peals of Bohemian laughter; has no
time to finish; dresses for the evening performance while the manager
reports from the other side of a curtain; acts with all her heart and
soul; discusses business between the acts; remains at the theatre
after the performance, and makes arrangements until three o’clock in
the morning; does not make up her mind to go until she sees her staff
respectfully endeavouring to keep awake; gets into her carriage;
huddles herself into her furs and anticipates the delights of lying
down and resting at last; bursts out laughing on remembering that some
one is waiting to read her a five-act play; returns home, listens to
the piece, becomes excited, weeps, accepts it, finds she cannot sleep,
and takes advantage of the opportunity to study a part!

This, my dear Huret, is what seems to me more extraordinary than
anything. This is the Sarah I have always known. I never made the
acquaintance of the Sarah with the coffin and the alligators. The only
Sarah I know is the one who works. She is the greater.

                    EDMOND ROSTAND.

  _Paris, April 25, 1899._




CONTENTS


                                                                    PAGE
  Preface                                                            vii

  Sarah Bernhardt                                                      1

  “Sarah Bernhardt’s Day”                                            153

  Sarah Bernhardt’s ‘Hamlet’                                         179




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                                    PAGE
  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt                               _Frontispiece_

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt and her son Maurice at the age of five          6

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt and her son Maurice at the age of eleven        8

  Mme. Guérard                                                        13

  As Junie in _Britannicus_                                           14

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt when a girl                                    17

  As Zanetto in _Le Passant_                                          20

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt in _François le Champi_                        21

  In _Le Drame de la Rue de la Paix_                                  24

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt’s Cheque                                       26

  As Cordelia in _King Lear_                                          29

  As Doña Sol in _Hernani_                                            32

  As Léonora in _Dalila_                                              35

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt and her son Maurice at the age of fifteen      39

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt as Cleopatra                                   43

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt in _La Fille de Roland_                        46

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt in her coffin                                  49

  As Doña Sol in _Hernani_                                            53

  As Doña Sol in _Hernani_                                            56

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt in her travelling costume                      59

  As Léonora in _Dalila_                                              63

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt in 1877                                        67

  Sketch by Caran d’Ache                                              70

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt as sculptor                                    71

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt as painter                                     75

  Caricature by André Gill                                            77

  Sketch by Mme. Sarah Bernhardt                                      78

  As Adrienne Lecouvreur                                              83

  As Adrienne Lecouvreur                                              87

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt in travelling costume, during her first
      American tour                                                   89

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt and her friends at Sainte-Adresse              93

  As Léa                                                              97

  M. Damala                                                          101

  As Théodora                                                        103

  Scene from _Théodora_                                              107

  As Lady Macbeth                                                    111

  As Jeanne d’Arc                                                    115

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt on one of her tours                           117

  As Cleopatra                                                       121

  Vestibule of Mme. Sarah Bernhardt’s studio                         125

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt’s drawing-room                                129

  In _La Dame de Chalant_                                            133

  As Pauline Blanchard                                               136

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt and the painter Clairin                       137

  As Izeïl                                                           140

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt in her entrance-hall                          141

  As Gismonda                                                        145

  The Fort-aux-Poulains, Belle-Isle, Mme. Sarah Bernhardt’s country
      residence                                                      149

  Mme. Sarah Bernhardt, from a drawing by C. Léandre                 159

  As Phèdre                                                          163

  As Phèdre                                                          165

  Caricature of Mme. Sarah Bernhardt by Capiello                     170

  In _La Dame aux Camélias_                                          174

  Scene from _Hamlet_                                                181

  As Hamlet                                                          187




SARAH BERNHARDT


On the 10th February, 1898, Mme. Sarah Bernhardt telephoned to me to
come and see her. The occasion was a serious one. She told me that on
the following day she would leave her house in the Boulevard Pereire
and enter a private hospital in the Rue d’Armaillé, where she was
to undergo a painful operation. For some time past she had suffered
from a dull, aching pain, and during a performance of _Les Mauvais
Bergers_, in which she had to fall flat on her face, she experienced
a sharper pang than usual. She ought to have at once begun to take
care of herself and avoid all fatigue, but when she returned to her
dressing-room, her first act was to fall on her face again to make
sure that what she had felt was not mere imagination. She went on
making sure in this way through the remaining forty performances of
_Les Mauvais Bergers_. Finally, however, she called in Dr. Pozzi, who
immediately discovered serious internal trouble, and informed her
that an operation must be performed in June. In spite of this, Mme.
Sarah Bernhardt organized a provincial tour; but her condition suddenly
became worse, and Dr. Pozzi decided that the operation must take place
almost immediately.

A few days before the date fixed, the actress decided to break the news
to her son. She did this on the eve of his duel with M. Champsaur, of
which, of course, he had not told her.

“You can imagine what a blow it was to him,” Mme. Sarah Bernhardt
remarked to me.

“Were you not afraid?” I asked--I don’t exactly know why, the great
artiste being as gay and alert as usual.

“Afraid?” she replied. “No; there’s no danger with Pozzi. It’s just
a stroke of bad luck,” she added bravely, with a smile. “I had a
wonderful run of success last year, too much in fact, and now this is a
set-off.”

“When is the operation to be?” I asked.

“On Wednesday. Don’t forget to come and see me when I am convalescent.
I will tell you all sorts of fine stories, so that you won’t get bored.”

The operation was perfectly successful, and on the 1st of May, Mme.
Sarah Bernhardt, who was then quite out of danger, was allowed to
see her friends on condition that they should be very few and their
visits very short. As one of these friends, I spent half-an-hour in the
sick-room.

The hospital, situated in the Ternes quarter of Paris, is a species
of small private house with a courtyard in front, and is as little
like a medical establishment as can be imagined. The patient’s room,
scrupulously neat and clean, was on the first floor, overlooking a
small garden containing a few large trees. The great artiste was lying
on a small iron bed, her fair hair completely covering her pillow. She
was smiling and gay, as usual; perhaps a little paler than her wont,
that was all. My mind involuntarily reverted to Lady Macbeth, Doña
Sol, Maria de Neubourg, Phèdre, and Froufrou, and I thought of all the
triumphs, heroic ardour, wild passion and divine melancholy of thirty
years of art and crowded life abruptly cut short and laid low under the
surgeon’s knife. But the wonderful vitality of this rare creature, who
has always vanquished every combination of adverse circumstances, had
once more got the better of misfortune.

“I kept on telling myself every day,” she said, “that this is the price
I have to pay for the great day I had two years ago. I always said
something of this kind was bound to come. Ask Seylor if I didn’t.”

Mlle. Seylor, Mme. Sarah Bernhardt’s faithful companion, who has not
been absent from her a day for the last ten years, had just entered the
room.

“Didn’t I tell you so, Seylor?” the patient continued. “When you kissed
me and said how happy you were over my ‘glory,’ as you called it,
didn’t I say, ‘Everything has its bad side as well as its good. See if
I don’t pay dearly for to-day!’”

And a shadow of melancholy came over the great artiste’s features, but
soon disappeared. As the song of a bird arose from the garden, she
exclaimed--

“Listen to that blackbird; isn’t it delightful? He sings every morning
just as if he had been put there on purpose for me.”

Speaking of the operation, she said--

“It lasted an hour and a half, but I did not feel the slightest pain
either then or afterwards. I have had no fever at all. At the present
moment my temperature is not above 97°. For two days the chloroform
rather annoyed me, and I had touches of nausea, but that was all. The
only pain I had was what I inflicted on my son by running the risk.
Poor boy! it’s the first time I have ever made him suffer of my own
free will!”

My eyes wandered round the room. Apart from a few roses and orchids,
there was nothing on the mantelpiece and tables but portraits of
Maurice Bernhardt as a child, as a youth, and as he is to-day. There
was also a marble bust of him.

“Look!” said Sarah, “there are his first shoe and his first shirt.”

Hanging from the corner of a mirror were a tiny little white
patent-leather shoe, all shrivelled by time, and a shirt that might
have fitted a doll.

“They never leave me,” she added. “When I travel, I take them with me,
and I felt I must have them here. I believe they bring me good luck.”

Before taking leave I inquired as to the probable duration of the
convalescence.

“At