Part 22
For commanding figures in tragedy, for the Duses and Bernhardts of earlier days, we must look, as a rule, outside of England and America. There is, to be sure, always Sarah Siddons, a majestic figure, a veritable Queen of Tragedy, who made her characters--such as Lady Macbeth and Queen Katherine--awe-inspiring even to those who acted with her. Her niece, Frances Ann Kemble, was prevented from being a truly great actress only by a dislike for the stage. As it was, with her Juliet, her Belvidera in _Venice Preserved_, and her Julia in _The Hunchback_ she takes her place in that succession of tragic actresses which, with the change in theatrical fashions, has now ceased, and which has had its best examplars on the Continent rather than in England.
In Charlotte Cushman, America produced a tragic actress of commanding dignity and power. She was “a noble interpreter of the noble minds of the past,” a stately and vigorous woman, unique as Meg Merrilies, and a powerful and poetic interpreter of Shakespeare’s tragic women.
The daughter of a Jew, Rachel Felix was a Parisian by birth, and thus far she was an earlier Bernhardt. In the thrilling intensity of her acting and in the capricious imperiousness of her own nature, she again suggests Madame Sarah. She introduced a measure of naturalness of speech and spontaneity of action into the French theatre, and here her influence was like that of Duse.
The rise of Adelaide Ristori spelled the decline of the great Rachel. In her earnestness, in her choice of plays, in the quiet dignity of her life and nature, Ristori is recalled by that later great Italian, Duse. And just as Duse invaded Paris and rivaled the reigning queen of the stage there, so (only more successfully) did Ristori when she replaced Rachel in French esteem. Ristori’s parts, however, suggest rather Bernhardt, though in general all four actresses--Rachel, Ristori, Bernhardt and Duse--have worked in the same _metier_. Ristori’s great parts were Medea, Francesca, Myrrha, Lady Macbeth, Phédre, Marie Stuart and Queen Elizabeth.
Janauscheck, “the last of the actresses of the ‘grand style,’” born in Prague and for years a successful _tragedienne_ in Germany, anticipated Modjeska by her adoption of America and the English tongue. She too was an heroic woman, who impressed her generation by the intensity and sincerity of her acting, her wonderful voice, and the dignity she lent her profession. Her best parts were in _Bleak House_, _Brünnhilde_, _Medea_ and _Marie Stuart_.
Adelaide Neilson, a womanly and gracious personality, an ideal Juliet, and a Shakspearean actress who as Viola, Imogen and Rosalind foreshadowed and combined many of the merits of Modjeska, Rehan and Marlowe, died in the ripeness of her youth and ability.
[3] _The Wallet of Time._
[4] “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, 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 forward and back, 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 endeavoring to keep awake; gets into her carriage; huddles herself into her furs and anticipates the delights of lying down and resting at last; bursts into 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 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, in _Sarah Bernhardt_, by Jules Huret.
[5] The correct date and place, according to the official record of the _Conservatoire_. The year has sometimes been given 1845. Some accounts have given Holland, others Havre, as the birthplace. Sarah herself says Paris.
[6] At Neuilly her aunt Rosine came one day to see her. “I insisted that I wanted to go away at once. In a gentle, tender, caressing voice, but without any real affection, she said all kinds of pretty things. She then went away. I could see nothing but the dark, black hole which remained there immutable behind me, and in a fit of despair I rushed out to my aunt who was just getting into her carriage. After that I knew nothing more. I had managed to escape from my poor nurse and had fallen down on the pavement. I had broken my arm in two places and injured my knee cap. I was two years recovering.” _Memoirs._
[7] _Memoirs._
[8] “One day, when we heard that all the schools in France, except ours, had been given bonbons on the occasion of the baptism of the Prince Imperial, I proposed to several other girls that we should run away, and I undertook to manage it. Being on good terms with the sister in charge of the gate, I went into her lodge and pretended to have a hole in my dress under the armpit. To let her examine the hole I raised my arms toward the cord communicating with the gate, and whilst she was looking at my dress I pulled the cord, my accomplices rushed out, and I followed them. Our entire stock of provisions, ammunition, and sinews of war consisted of a few clothes, three pieces of soap in a bag, and the sum of seven francs fifty centimes in money. This was to take us to the other end of the world! A search had to be made for us, and as the good sisters could hardly undertake it, the police were set on our track. There was not much difficulty in finding us, as you may imagine. I was sent home in disgrace. On another occasion, I had climbed on to the wall separating the convent from the cemetery. A grand funeral was in progress and the Bishop of Versailles was delivering an address. I immediately began to gesticulate, shout and sing at the top of my voice so as to interrupt the ceremony. You can imagine the scene--a child of twelve sitting astride a wall, and a bishop interrupted in the midst of a funeral oration! The scandal was great.”--Huret.
[9] “Consequently I entered the _Conservatoire_. The next question was, in which class was I to study? Beauvallet said: ‘She will be a _tragedienne_.’ Regnier maintained: ‘She will be a _comédienne_,’ and Provost put them in agreement by declaring: ‘She will be both.’ I joined Provost’s class.”--Huret.
[10] One for tragedy in 1861, and one for comedy in 1862. She never won a first prize.
[11] M. Regnier and M. Doucet among them. Both had been her teachers, as had M. Provost and M. Samson, the latter of whom had taught Rachel.
[12] She says she had chosen this device at the age of nine, “after a formidable jump over a ditch which no one could jump, and which my young cousin had dared me to attempt. I had hurt my face, broken my wrist and was in pain all over. While I was being carried home I exclaimed furiously: ‘Yes, I would do it again, _quand-même_, if any one dared me again. And I will always do what I want to all my life.’ In the evening of that day, my aunt, who was grieved to see me in such pain, asked me what would give me any pleasure. My poor little body was all bandaged, but I jumped with joy at this, and quite consoled I whispered in a coaxing way: ‘I should like to have some writing paper with a motto of my own.’ My mother asked me rather slyly what my motto was. I did not answer for a minute, and then, as they were all waiting quietly, I uttered such a furious ‘_Quand-même!_’ that my Aunt Faure started back muttering: ‘What a terrible child!’”
[13] The great critic Sarcey’s comments in _L’Opinion Nationale_ were read to her by her mother: “Mlle. Bernhardt, who made her début yesterday in the rôle of Iphigénie, is a tall, pretty girl with a slender figure and a very pleasing expression. The upper part of her face is remarkably beautiful. She holds herself well, and her enunciation is perfectly clear. This is all that can be said for her at present.” “The man is an idiot,” said her mother, “you were charming.”--_Memoirs._
[14] Characteristically, she brought her engagement at the _Gymnase_ to a sudden close by quietly going to Spain the day after the first performance of a play in which she disliked her part.
[15] Thin she was, and thin she remained. She once said, in after years: “As for me, if I should cease to be thin, what would become of some of the Paris journalists? Scarcely a day but they have some _mot_ about me personally. Really I am almost the _raison d’être_ of some of these small wits!”
[16] She played at the _Odéon_: Albine in _Britannicus_; Sylvia in _Le Jeu de l’Amour et du Hasard_; Zacharie in _Athalie_; the Baroness in _Le Marquis de Villemer_; Mariette in _François le Champi_; Hortense in _Le Testament de César Girodôt_; Anna Damby in _Kean_ (Dumas’ _Sullivan_); in _La Loterie du Mariage_; Zanetto in _Le Passant_ by Coppée; in _L’Autre_ by George Sand; Armande in _Les Femmes Savantes_; Cordelia in _King Lear_; in _Le Bâtard_; _L’Affranchi_; _Jean-Marie_, by Andre Theuriet; _Les Arrêts_ by de Boissières, _Le Legs_; _Le Drame de la Rue de la Paix_; _Fais ce que dois_, by Coppée; _La Baronne_ by Edmond and Foussier; _Mlle. Aïsse_; and the Queen of Spain in _Ruy Blas_ by Victor Hugo.
[17] On the first night of Dumas’ play, the distinguished author was the victim of a remarkable demonstration by the audience. He sat in a box with “Oceana.” The novelist’s alliance with this woman was evidently unpopular, for a great shout was sent up and many in the audience were heard to call for the woman’s removal. In the midst of the uproar the play, already long delayed, was begun. The woman finally left the house. The _Figaro_ next day said: “Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt appeared wearing an eccentric costume, which increased the tumult, but her rich voice--that astonishing voice of hers--appealed to the public, and she charmed them like a little Orpheus.”
[18] Now about five. Although she was a mother Sarah had not yet married.
[19] Mme. Bernhardt tells a rather pretty story of the great novelist: “One day when the rehearsal was over an hour earlier than usual, I was waiting, my forehead pressed against the window pane, for the arrival of Mme. Guérard, who was coming to fetch me. I was gazing idly at the footpath opposite, which is bounded by the Luxembourg railings. Victor Hugo had just crossed the road and was about to walk in. An old woman attracted his attention. She had just put a heavy bundle of linen down on the ground and was wiping her forehead, on which were great beads of perspiration. In spite of the cold, her toothless mouth was half open, as she was panting and her eyes had an expression of distressing anxiety, as she looked at the wide road she had to cross, with carriages and omnibuses passing each other. Victor Hugo approached her, and after a short conversation, he drew a piece of money from his pocket, handed it to her, then taking off his hat he confided it to her and, with a quick movement and a laughing face, lifted the bundle to his shoulder and crossed the road, followed by the bewildered woman. The next day I told the poet that I had witnessed his delicate, good deed. ‘Oh,’ said Paul Maurice, ‘every day that dawns is a day of kindness for him!’”
[20] It was small enough, to be sure. Her demand was for only 15,000 francs ($3,000) a year.
[21] It was on the occasion of the first night of this play that she says she reverted to a trick of her childhood. Once when she had been fed something disagreeable, Sarah deliberately drank off a bottle of ink in the hope that she would die and vex her mother. Now when Perrin refused her a month’s needed holiday and forced her to play Zaïre in midsummer: “I was determined to faint, determined to vomit blood, determined to die, in order to enrage Perrin. Although the rôle was easy, it required two or three shrieks which might have provoked the vomiting of blood that frequently troubled me at that time. I uttered my shrieks with real rage and suffering, hoping to break something. But my surprise was great when the curtain fell at the end of the piece, and I got up quickly to answer to the call and salute the public without languor, without fainting, ready to recommence the piece. I had commenced the performance in such a state of weakness that it was easy to predict that I should not finish the first act without fainting. And I marked this performance with a little white stone--for that day I learned that my vital force was at the service of my intellect.” This is a significant passage. It helps to explain the wonder of Bernhardt’s unexampled vitality in the face of hard work and a frail physique.
[22] She remained at the _Comédie_ this time eight years, 1872–1880. Her first appearances were: Gabrielle in _Mlle. de Belle-Isle_, Junie in _Britannicus_, 1872; Chérubin in _Le Mariage de Figaro_, Léonora in _Dalila_, Mrs. Douglas in _L’Absent_, Marthe in _Chez l’Avocat_, _Andromaque_, Aricie in _Phèdre_, 1873; _Peril en la Demeure_, Berthe de Savigny in _Le Sphinx_, _La Belle Paule_, _Zaïre_, Phèdre in _Phèdre_, 1874; Berthe in _La Fille de Roland_, _Gabrielle_, 1875; Mrs. Clarkson in _L’Etrangère_, Posthumia in _Rome Vaincue_, 1876; Doña Sol in _Hernani_, 1877; Desdemona in Aicard’s _Othello_ (once only), Alcmène in _Amphitrion_, 1878; Monime in _Mithridate_, 1879; Clorinde in _L’Aventurtière_, 1880.
[23] For many years her tomb in Père Lachaise has been awaiting her.
[24] She published an account of these aerial experiences: _Dans les nuages; Impressions d’une Chaise_.
[25] The Associates or _Sociétaires of the Comédie Française_ are sharers in the profits, a custom that has come down from the days of Molière. A member of the company is at first a _pensionnaire_, and serves upon a salary only. After proving his worth he is made _Sociétaire_. He does not at once receive a full share of the profits, however, but must progress from an eighth, fourth and half share to the full rank of _Sociétaire_ _à parte entière_. Bernhardt had been made _Sociétaire_ in 1875. During the year 1879 the share received by the leading actors and actresses of the _Comédie_ varied from 55,000 to 70,000 francs, besides their salaries. Sarah’s share was 62,000 francs.
[26] Perrin and his fellow directors were not the only ones who felt the strain imposed by Sarah’s presence on earth. She herself tells of the dying words of Charles Varrey: “I am content to die because I shall hear no more of Sarah Bernhardt and the great Français.” The latter was de Lesseps, then much in the public eye.
[27] In this statement, for once, M. Sarcey justified Sardou’s tribute, inspired, seven years later, by Sarcey’s criticism of _La Tosca_: “Sarcey, who knows nothing about painting, music, architecture or sculpture, and to whom Nature has harshly denied all sense of the artistic.”
[28] She was to have $1,000 per night, half the receipts over $3,000, $200 a week for hotel bills, and a special car.
[29] Huret.
[30] She played on this tour: _La Dame aux Camélias_ (sixty-five times); _Frou-Frou_ (forty-one times); _Adrienne Lecouvreur_ (seventeen); _Hernani_ (fourteen); _Le Sphinx_ (seven); _Phèdre_ (six); _La Princesse Georges_ (three); and _L’Etrangère_ (three),--one hundred and fifty-six performances in all, with average receipts of $2,820. She acted in half a hundred cities of the East, Middle West and South, including New York, Boston, Montreal, Ottawa, Springfield, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Memphis, Louisville, Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
[31] In Chicago another bishop attacked Bernhardt and her plays. Mr. Abbey, her manager, thereupon sent him this letter: “Whenever I visit your city I am accustomed to spend four hundred dollars in advertising. But as you have done the advertising for me, I send you $200 for your poor.”
[32] Huret.
[33] A dispatch from Moscow represents the feeling there: “Sarah Bernhardt is extremely hoarse and cannot appear this evening. General consternation prevails.” She finally did act in Berlin, in 1902.
[34] Sarah Bernhardt’s son Maurice was born in 1865 and was, therefore, seventeen at the time of his mother’s marriage.
[35] The Argentinos, in enthusiastic but ill-advised generosity, presented Sarah with an estate of thirteen thousand acres. As if Sarah could feel at home so far from Paris!
[36] Mme. Bernhardt’s more important productions, since she became a manager in her own right, have been as follows: _Fédora_, 1882; _Nana Sahib_, 1883; _Macbeth_, _Théodora_, 1884; _Marion Delorme_, 1885; _Hamlet_ (Ophelia), _Le Maître des Forges_, 1886; _La Tosca_, 1887; _Francillon_, 1888; _Lena_, 1889; _Jeanne d’Arc_, _Cléopâtre_, 1890; _Pauline Blanchard_, _La Dame de Chalant_, 1891; _Les Rois_, 1893; _Izeïl_, _Gismonda_, 1894; _Magda_, _La Princesse Lointaine_, 1895; _Lorenzaccio_, 1896; _Spiritisme_, _La Samaritaine_, _Les Mauvais Bergers_, 1897; _La Ville Morte_, _Lysiane_, _Médée_, 1898; _Hamlet_, 1899; _L’Aiglon_, 1900; _Francesca da Rimini_, 1902; _Andromache_, 1903; _La Sorcière_, 1904; _Tisbe_, _Angelo_, 1905; _La Vierge d’Avila_, 1906; _Les Bouffons_, 1907; _La Belle au Bois Dormant_, _La Courtisane de Corinthe_, 1908; _Le Proces de Jeanne d’Arc_, 1909; _La Femme X_, _Judas_, _Le Coeur d’Homme_ (written by herself), _La Beffa_, 1910; _La Reine Élisabeth_, _Une Nuit de Noel_, 1912; _Jeanne Doré_, 1913.
To the plays she had acted during the first American tour, 1880–81, (see page 28, note) she added, on her subsequent visits: 1887, _Fédora_, _Le Maître des Forges_, _Théodora_; 1891, _La Tosca_, _Cléopatra_; 1891–92, _Jeanne d’Arc_, _La Dame de Chalant_, _Pauline Blanchard Leah_; 1896, _Izeïl_, _Magda_, _Gismonda_, _La Femme de Claude_; 1900–01, (with Coquelin) _L’Aiglon_, _Hamlet_, _Cyrano de Bergerac_; 1905–06, _La Sorcière_, _Angelo_, _Sapho_, _Tisbé_. (During the tour of 1905–06, while acting in Texas she was forced on two or three occasions to appear in a circus tent in lieu of a theatre. The “theatrical trust” had for some reason denied her the privilege of acting in its theatres.) In 1910–11 she appeared, for the first time in America, in _La Femme X_, _La Samaritaine_, _Jean-Marie_, _Sœur Beatrice_, and _Judas_.
[37] It was really written, gossip said, by M. Paul Bonnetain. Sarah replied with an equally abusive book about Mlle. Colombier, which was entitled _La Vie de Marie Pigeonnier_, and which was probably written by M. Richepin.
[38] It carries her story down to her return from the first American tour, in 1881. A second volume was vaguely promised.
[39] But to Mr. Winter her Hamlet was a “dreadful desecration”! When she produced the play in Paris, the late M. Catulle Mendes and another journalist fought a duel, having disputed as to whether Hamlet was fat or not.
[40] John Corbin in the _New York Sun_, Dec. 17, 1905. A quarter of a century earlier, Matthew Arnold had written of Bernhardt, then in the midst of her first visit to London: “One remark I will make, a remark suggested by the inevitable comparison of Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt with Rachel. One talks vaguely of genius, but I had never till now comprehended how much of Rachel’s superiority was purely in intellectual power, how eminently this power counts in the actor’s art as in all art, how just is the instinct which led the Greeks to mark with a high and severe stamp the Muses. Temperament and quick intelligence, passion, nervous mobility, grace, smile, voice, charm, poetry--Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt has them all; one watches her with pleasure, with admiration, and yet not without a secret disquietude. Something is wanting, or, at least, not present in sufficient force; something which alone can secure and fix her administration of all the charming gifts which she has, can alone keep them fresh, keep them sincere, save them from perils by caprice, perils by mannerism; that something is high intellectual power. It was here that Rachel was so great; she began, one says to oneself, as one recalls her image and dwells upon it--she began almost where Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt ends.”
[41] “Her fiery, voluble utterance of jealous rage when at last she seemed to lose all control of herself (without ever losing it) ... was as splendid, whether viewed as expression of human nature or illustration of proficiency in acting, as any professional exploit of hers in the whole of her long career.... It was in her showing of the sweetly capricious quality of the character, however, that the actress was supremely fine.” _The Wallet of Time, Vol. I._
[42] When the American _comédienne_, Elsie Janis, omitted from her London program her imitation of Bernhardt, Sarah heard of it and cabled to Miss Janis: “I am very well. Continue to charm the public with imitations of me.”
[43] The Polish diminutive of Helena.
[44] “She went into the kitchen when she got home, in order to make the experiment herself. She built a great pile of all the saucepans and frying-pans, and then, climbing to the top, tried to stand there upon one toe. Naturally this venture ended in disaster; and Madame Opid vowed Helcia should go no more to the theatre, for it excited her too much. Nor did she again enter a theatre until she was fourteen.”--Collins, _Modjeska_.
[45] The masculine form. The feminine ends in -ska. Madame Modrzejewska later simplified the name to Modjeska.