Sarah Bernhardt

“ Never was the adage that courage is born of necessity truer than in the case of the young Sarah Bernhardt.
Forced to work to support her child, whom she sent to a professional nurse in Normandy, Sarah laboured with a fierceness and a tenacity unequalled in the history of the stage.
She found work at the Gymnase, at the Porte St. Martin, at the Vaudeville, at the Lyric and at other theatres. Never allowing herself a moment’s rest, studying her parts far into the night, arriving always the first for rehearsals, she gamely set foot on rung after rung of the ladder which she had herself set up. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Motherhood gave Sarah Bernhardt ambition.
If from then on she became greedy of praise and publicity, she at the same time became a strenuous worker; if she was hard with those whom she used as stepping-stones, she was harder with herself; if she allowed her tongue to become caustic and her manner overbearing, it was because life had been revealed to her in its veritable aspect, and because she realised the supreme necessity of building a wall between herself and her past. ”

“ Damala boasted to his friends that, as soon as he looked at her, the great Sarah Bernhardt would be counted on his long list of victims; and Bernhardt was no less certain that she had only to command for Damala to succumb.
She was all woman, feline in her charm and attraction for men, but herculean in the labour which was in reality the greater half of her life. Damala was only half a man; he had the exterior, the sexual attraction of one, but he lacked the vital power to live and to endure by the labour of his hands and brain. ”

“ 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? ”

“ That Mlle. Bernhardt should be insignificant does not much matter. She is a débutante, and among the number presented to us it is only natural that some should be failures. The pitiful part is, though, that the comedians playing with her were not much better than she was, and they are Sociétaires of the Théâtre Français. All that they had more than their young comrade was a greater familiarity with the boards. They are just as Mlle. Bernhardt may be in twenty years’ time, if she stays at the Comédie Française.”
AN EARLY PORTRAIT OF
SARAH BERNHARDT ”

“ When Sarah Bernhardt left the Comédie Française, Sardou followed in her footsteps, and afterwards devoted most of his energy to preparing a series of melodramas to serve successively as vehicles for her. Now, Sarah Bernhardt is an actress of marked abilities, and limitations likewise marked. In sheer perfection of technique she surpasses all performers of her time. She is the acme of histrionic dexterity; all that she does upon the stage is, in sheer effectiveness, superb. But in her work she has no soul ”

“ Ah, how happy I am!” We are now alongside the jetty. There are perhaps twenty thousand people there, who cry out, “Vive Sarah Bernhardt!”
I was dumfounded. I did not expect any triumphant return. I was well aware that the performance to be given for the Life Saving Society had won the hearts of the people of Hâvre, but now I learnt that trains had come from Paris, packed with people, to welcome my return....
I feel my pulse. It is me. I am not dreaming.
The boat stops opposite a red velvet tent, and an invisible orchestra strikes up an air from Le Châlet, “Arrêtons-nous ici.” ”

“ It is to be doubted whether Julie ever really understood the miracle that had happened. It is to be doubted also whether she ever credited Sarah with the genuine greatness that was hers. Almost to the day of her death, in fact, she was steadily lamenting her daughter’s extravagances and eccentricities—she, of all women, whose foibles had once shocked the gayest city in the world!
It takes a strong will and a cool head to survive the fast life of the theatre, especially when that life is lived as Sarah Bernhardt lived it. Though Sarah might appear strong ”

“ This exhibition, marvelous in beauty of pose, in febrile force, in intensity, and in purity of delivery, is the more remarkable as the passion had to be reached, so to speak, at a bound, no performance of the first act having roused the actress to the requisite heat. It proved Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt worthy of her reputation, and shows what may be expected from her by the public which has eagerly expected her coming. ”

“ In later years Sarah played Molière several times, but she made no notable success in this author’s works.
Sarah always longed to be a comédienne; she might have been a great one, in fact, but for her greater gifts for tragedy, which prevented managers from risking her appearance in lighter drama. Great comédiennes of merit are less rare than great tragediennes. In fact, I doubt whether there is living to-day an actress who will ever be called Sarah Bernhardt’s equal in tragedy. ”

“ The little movements and artistic attitudes of Sarah Bernhardt would seem forced and artificial beside that unborn charm and harmony of gesture, unstudied and perfect as the ripple of tall grasses or the swaying of the branches of a weeping willow beneath a summer breeze. She is pure womanly, every inch of her. She cannot be awkward even when she tries ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ With less than 500 francs—twenty pounds—a month, and with the inevitable extra expenses incidental to her career, what could Sarah Bernhardt be expected to afford? Her mother could spare her nothing. Her aunt Rosine, in an effort to placate the girl for the many slights of childhood, had given her two ponies and a smart little carriage, but this, at the same time, cost a good deal to keep up. None of her other relatives gave her anything. When she appealed to them they would say: “Why do you ask us? You are a famous actress, and famous actresses can always have money!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One day a friend took me to Sarah Bernhardt’s house. It was a real visit, but it seemed to me nevertheless like a dream. I was scarcely able to speak or to breathe. I could hardly presume to look at her. I was in the presence of my divinity.
Later she invited me to have lunch with her, as a result of my begging her to be photographed by one of the best photographers of San Francisco, who had crossed the ocean expressly to take Sarah Bernhardt in her wonderful studio. She had consented. I had taken my compatriot to her, and she had posed for him very graciously. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She played the long and cruel scene in which Adrienne, poisoned by the Duchesse de Bouillon, struggles against death in her fearful agony, not only with immense talent, but with a science of art which up to the present she has never revealed. If the Parisian public had heard ... or ever hears, Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt cry out with the piercing accent which she put into her words that evening: ‘I will not die, I will not die!’ it would weep with her. ”

“ Alexandre Dumas fils once told me: “She drives me mad when I am with her. She is all temperament and no heart; but when she is gone, how I work! How I can work!”
Georges Clairin threw down his tools in his studio one day, interrupting work on a great mural painting he was doing for Sarah Bernhardt’s house, and went in search of Sarah. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For nearly sixty years never a day went by without the words “Sarah Bernhardt” being printed somewhere or other. When she returned from her American tour in 1898, the press-clippings she brought back with her filled a large trunk.
The interesting point in all this is that only a very few writers concerned themselves with her painting and sculpture. Out of all the millions of articles written about her, a bare sixty or seventy concern her capabilities outside the theatre. ”

“ And she looked from the mantel to the ivory Virgin, whose open hands seemed to be showering blessings.
Esperance looked back to the white orchid.
"If I do not marry that man I am lost," she thought.
Almost terrified, she got up and walked about to calm herself, to conquer the instinct which her reason told her was wrong. Still under the strain of the emotions of the triumphal day, and to escape the disagreeable thought the sight of the radiant gardenias provoked in her, she began to write a long letter to the Countess Styvens. ”

“ He thereupon kissed Madame Guérard’s hand, and she coloured slightly. This conversation remained engraved on my mind. I remember every word of it, every movement and every gesture of M. Auber’s, for this little man, so charming and so gentle, held my future in his transparent-looking hand. He opened the door for us and, touching me on my shoulder, said: “Come, courage, little girl. Believe me, you will thank your mother some day for driving you to it. Don’t look so sad. Life is well worth beginning seriously, but gaily.” ”

“ Drawing-room Comedies of Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt, under the management of Sir Julius Benedict.—“The répertoire of Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt is composed of comedies, proverbs, one-act plays, and monologues, written specially for her and one or two artistes of the Comédie Française. These comedies are played without accessories or scenery, and can be adapted both in London and Paris to the matinées and soirées of the best society. For all details and conditions please communicate with Mr. Jarrett (secretary of Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt) at Her Majesty’s Theatre.” ”

“ Every one gazed at me in a bewildered way, and that increased my terror. My sister went into hysterics, and my dear Guérard groaned in a heartrending way, “Oh heavens, my dear Sarah, oh heavens!” An artist was making sketches; fortunately the members of our company had gone up again in order to go and see the Rapids. Abbey besought me to return; poor Jarrett besought me. But I felt dizzy, and I could not and would not cross again. Angelo then sprang across the crevice, and remaining there, called for a plank of wood and a hatchet.
“Bravo! bravo!” I exclaimed from the back of my rhinoceros. ”