Mme. Pierre Berton

“ The sad story of Jeanne will be told later, but it may be said that she had none of Sarah’s vast intelligence, none of her good taste, none of her tremendous capacity for affection. Jeanne was without talent—a pretty but vapid shell. Her father was not, of course, Edouard Bernhardt.
Régine, on the other hand, took after Sarah, who practically brought her up. But Régine had Sarah’s temper and wild, erratic temperament without Sarah’s talent and Sarah’s stubborn will. Where Sarah was firm and unyielding, Régine was merely obstinate. Where Sarah was clever, Régine was only “smart.” ”

“ Throughout her career Sarah Bernhardt seemed to have possessed this God-given faculty of elevating the ideals and ennobling the ambitions of men. The influence she exerted on her century in matters of art was incalculable. To painters she would say: “If you love me, then paint a masterpiece and dedicate it to me!” To poets she would say: “If it is true that you love me, you will write a poem about me that will live when we both are dead!” And true it is that numbers of famous verses to anonymous beauty had their inception in the ideal which Sarah Bernhardt had succeeded in creating. ”

“ How many know that she was a vegetarian, and often said that her long life was due to her horror of meat? How many know that, for many long years, until infirmity intervened, Sarah Bernhardt, the Jewess born, was a practising Catholic, seldom missing her Sunday attendance at Mass?
Is it not extraordinary that so little should really have been known of the most famous woman in the world? Is it not amazing that Sarah was able to conceal her home life under the glorious camouflage of her stage career? ”

“ Jane Essler, a famous artiste of her time, who had been sitting in a chair lazily watching the scene with an expression of calm indifference, suddenly jumped to her feet.
“Come, let us go to the Boulevards!” she cried.
“Aux boulevards!” We were swept away by excitement.
“No; let us go to the Odéon!” shouted Sarah, and this new suggestion met with a frenzy of approval.
“A l’Odéon! A l’Odéon! Vive la guerre!”
When we came down from the flat the Boulevard Haussmann, or the street now known by that name, was alive with people. ”

“ Scarcely had the last, sad curtain been rung down on that greatest of real-life dramas than the scavengers of literature—those grisly people who lurk in the night of life, dealing in calumny and lies—began delving into the past of Sarah Bernhardt, just as the real chiffoniers, those horrible old women of the dawn, delve into the dustbins of Paris, seeking for Heaven knows what filth. ”

“ She was the first actress who really understood the value of publicity.
Genius can be as eccentric as it pleases, but eccentricity without genius becomes a boomerang, to hurl fools into oblivion.
Had Sarah been a lesser woman all this publicity would have ruined her, but she really was a genius, and not only possessed a talent for self-advertisement, but had a genuine passion for work. People who had read dozens of idiotic stories about her would visit the theatre prepared to scoff—but they remained to applaud her frantically. ”

“ It was Berton who convinced Duquesnel, the director of the Odéon, of Sarah’s genius as a tragedienne; it was Berton who encouraged her and taught her and who, more than any other man, was responsible for her early triumphs. It was Berton who stood beside her when all Paris sneered at and mocked her, and it was Berton who defended her when the co-directors of the Odéon wished to cancel her contract because of what they termed her “incorrigibility.”
No living person, then, can be so fitted to tell Sarah’s true history as the widow of the man who, himself, lived a part of it. ”

“ If the great and successful deeds of men of genius make entrancing reading, how much more absorbing can be the tale of their spiritual struggles and “mental fights”?
And with her graduation from the art school—she was entitled to enter the Beaux Arts but never did—the real struggles of the lonely, temperamental child who was Sarah Bernhardt began. Though she did not know it, a war of impulses was going on within her soul.
There was her great, her undoubted talent for painting and sculpture, which her teachers were convinced would soon make her a great personage. ”

“ A list of the men whom Sarah Bernhardt loved and by whom she was loved reads like a biographical index of the great Frenchmen of the nineteenth century. It includes actors, painters, sculptors, architects, cartoonists, poets, authors, and playwrights, but not one idle rich man or rich man’s son!
It is to be doubted whether Berton, Chilly or Duquesnel helped her to furnish the flat in the rue Auber, and it is therefore somewhat of a mystery how she managed to assemble the strange setting which framed her at this period of her life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It never became really full, but its slenderness was less noticeable after she had given birth to her son, Maurice. It then to some extent rounded out, only to become thin again when she was forty, at which epoch she invented the shoulder-length glove to conceal the skeleton-like outline of her arms.
The birth of her son was the event which changed Sarah’s whole life. It gave her something to live for. Until then she had been a wilful, spoiled, eccentric girl, given to tremendous fits of temper which were invariably followed by prolonged periods of despondency. ”

“ When she was interested, they would snap into life with an extraordinary vivacity and play of expression; when she was angry, which was often enough, actual sparks of blue fire seemed to dart from eyes that had miraculously grown into two large, burning pools of wrath. No man I ever saw, except Damala, ever long withstood the challenge of those eyes when Sarah, wistful and imperious, desired to have her way. ”

“ Never before had any woman become such an entirely national character. Others had risen to similar artistic greatness—Rachel was probably as great a tragédienne as was Sarah at this epoch, and Sarah always declared that never in her life had she attained the sublime heights of Rachel’s art—but none had become at the same time a popular figure amongst the masses, to whom actresses until now had always seemed beings apart. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She was loved, not because she was a saint but because she was not a saint; for to err is human and to be human is to be loved. Even on the stage her art was natural—she did not pose, she lived.
13 In the history of the Christian world only one other woman was born under a greater handicap than was Sarah Bernhardt, and few women ever rose to a similar fame. Yet Sarah, even at the height of her career, did things which were justly condemned by strict-living people and would not have been tolerated in anyone else’s case. ”

“ Maurice.” These were her last words.... The curtain descended....
That day, Monday, the twenty-sixth of March, Victor Hugo died for a second time.
Even before she died, Sarah Bernhardt had outstripped Glory and had become Legend.
Nothing of hers had faltered: not her intelligence, not her heart, not her talent, not her genius. She was complete.
She was the glory and the light of the French theatre. The light that is extinguished will not flame again. How dark it seems!
Dead, she is greater than in life. Who of us would not accept her luminous night? ”

“ The bullet missed its mark and, turning in the saddle, Captain O’Connor mortally wounded the man. Then he made as if to ride coolly on.
“But you are not going to leave him like that?” asked Sarah, sick at heart, pointing to the man who lay dying on the grass.
“Why not,” asked O’Connor, coldly. “He would have worried himself precious little about you and me if he had succeeded in killing us. Every day friends in my regiment are killed in this way by some of these madmen in ambush.” ”

“ Her insistence on fulfilling her contract to play in this cinema play was, according to the doctors, the cause of her last collapse. It was more than her strength could stand. She was really dying when she faced the camera on the last two occasions. But her indomitable will triumphed over her body almost to the last, and, until the dreadful malady paralysed her, she continued acting.
My tears are falling as I write these last lines. They are difficult sentences to fashion. I am no poet, and words could not add to the drama of that night when the divine Call-boy came for Sarah Bernhardt. ”

“ With this letter in her hand she sought Duquesnel. That admirable man had long suspected that Sarah was eager to return to the Comédie.
But he only looked at her reproachfully and said: “Our little Sarah wishes to leave us? After all we have done for her? She does not love us any more!”
Sarah burst into a flood of tears, and flung herself into the director’s arms.
“It is not true! I do not want to leave you! I love you all! I would like to stay. But you see——”
168 She could not explain that she felt her glory incomplete as long as she remained only the star of the Odéon. ”

“ He was still coolly nonchalant in his dealings with Sarah and in this he was wise, for it was this cynical attitude of his, this disdain of her greatness and success, which had first attracted her to him and which continued to hold her interest and pique her curiosity.
Once get a woman curious about a man, to the extent of wishing to seek his company, and the rest follows as night the day....
To other people, Damala would praise Sarah wildly.
“She is the sun, the moon and the stars!” he would exclaim. “She is Queen of the World! She is divine!” ”

“ Victor Hugo, watching her at work in her studio on one occasion, said:
“Ah! madame, how I wish I could paint!”
“But you can!” replied Sarah.
“No,” said Hugo.
“Tu es ridicule!” responded Sarah. “Anyone who can write or who can act can paint if he tries!”
Then and there Sarah constituted herself his teacher, with the result that Hugo became an extremely creditable artist, chiefly with pen-and-ink. His chief delight was in sketching-tours, which he undertook with Sarah during her rare holidays—tours in which Clairin and Doré would generally also take part. ”

“ Rochefort saw that the necessary orders were given.
As winter dragged on, the siege became a wearisome thing, but the courage of the Parisians could not be daunted. Cut off from all communication with the outside world, and even from their fugitive armies in the South; starving and nearly at an end of their resources, there was nevertheless no real thought of surrender. The Germans said Paris could not hold out a month. It had already held out two.
The hardest thing was to keep up the spirits of the people, and in this Sarah Bernhardt again took a leading part. ”

“ CHAPTER XXVI Of all the tragic episodes that abounded in the life of Sarah Bernhardt, her marriage was probably the most tragic.
The one man whom she adored sufficiently to marry betrayed her love, made her a ridiculous spectacle in the eyes of her theatrical comrades, ill-treated her to the extent of actual cruelty, and, after spoiling her life for seven years, died a victim of morphine. ”

“ She was a sculptress of extraordinary merit; she was a painter whose pictures were exhibited in the Paris Salons before she became famous as an actress; she was a writer with many books to her credit.
A temperamental morbidity was, I think, supreme in her character, although many who knew her placed ambition first. After these came mother-love, vanity, affection and malice. She made more enemies than friends; more people feared her than loved her; yet her life was replete with great sentimental episodes with some of the most famous men of her time. ”

“ If I seem to lay unwonted stress on the Franco-Prussian war—now a matter, even for the French, of cold, unsentimental history—it is because it occurred at perhaps the most impressionable moment of Sarah Bernhardt’s life, and has thus a direct bearing on our story.
We have just gone through a war so big that, although the Armistice was signed five years ago, it seems only yesterday. We have had living evidence ourselves of the influences of war upon the generation which fought it. ”