Following the fiasco of her lost engagement at the Ambigu, Sarah Bernhardt visited her old and faithful friend, Camille Doucet. She was kept waiting some minutes in an ante-room, and, on being bidden eventually to go into his office, almost ran into a tall, handsome young man, who had been in conference with Doucet. The man stopped and apologised, and Sarah was conscious of two deep-set blue eyes regarding her with a real interest.

“Is this not Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt?” the tall man asked. On Sarah’s hesitating admission that he was right, the man continued:

“I have just been talking to Doucet about you. Come in, and we will see him together.”

Sarah followed him, not knowing who her new acquaintance was, nor understanding the nature of his business with her. Once in Camille Doucet’s office, however, she was quickly informed.

“This is Pierre Berton, junior,” said Doucet, introducing her. “He would like to see you a member of his company at the OdÉon.”

Sarah was overwhelmed. Pierre Berton was then one of the most popular actors on the French stage; he was also, after Mounet-Sully, the handsomest. To have been singled out by him for a part at the OdÉon was an honour she had never dared dream of. There was no actor in France with whom she would sooner have worked.

Sarah was too much taken aback at the sudden proposition to say much. Extending her hand to Berton, she thanked him with a smile.

“There is, however, an obstacle,” went on Doucet. “I have just learned this morning that the OdÉon staff has been reorganised and that Chilly has been named co-director with Duquesnel.”

Sarah’s spirits fell like lead. How could she hope for an engagement at the OdÉon, when one of the men who would have to sign her contract was the same who had, only a few days previously, said publicly that she could not act? Seeing her downcast Berton tried to reassure her.

“You need not be afraid of Chilly!” he said. “I have spoken to Duquesnel, and he is on our side. Chilly will have to agree!”

An appointment was made for Sarah to see Duquesnel on the following day and, after some further conversation, Berton offered to accompany Sarah home. In the cab Sarah asked him what was the reason for his interest in her.

“Since the day I saw you in Les Femmes Savantes at the ComÉdie FranÇaise,” Berton answered, “I have believed that you would one day become a very great actress, but I believe also that you need someone to aid you with the directors, who do not understand your temperament. I have watched you for two years, and I am prepared to help you at the OdÉon, as far as possible, if you will allow me to do so.”

Sarah’s reply, Berton told me in later years after I had become his wife, was to seize and kiss his hand impulsively.

From that moment began the wonderful romance which developed between these two—Pierre Berton, the accomplished and successful actor, and Sarah Bernhardt, the dÉbutante of twenty-two. Their relationship lasted a little over two years. When it finished—we shall see why presently—Sarah was as great an actress as he an actor. In two short years she had leaped to fame.

They met, as arranged, in Duquesnel’s office at the OdÉon, on the day following Sarah’s meeting with Berton and Doucet. Sarah was immediately taken with Duquesnel, a mild, blue-eyed man, endowed with prodigious activity and with the name of being possibly the greatest metteur-en-scÈne in Paris. He was exceedingly courteous to her and set her at ease immediately by declaring that he thought her engagement could easily be arranged.

She asked about Chilly. “You shall see him to-morrow,” promised Duquesnel. Sarah looked at Berton.

“I have spoken to him,” said the actor, “and he has promised to leave the engagement of the company in my own hands, providing the salaries and the lengths of the contracts are supervised and agreed to by him and Monsieur Duquesnel.”

Later on Sarah discovered that what had actually happened was that Chilly, spoken to the evening before, had flatly declined to consider Sarah as a member of the company.

“She is not an actress, and shows no promise of ever being one!” he repeated.

And then Pierre Berton had threatened to resign, so that in face of this threatened calamity Chilly had given way. He had insisted, however, that the responsibility for Sarah’s engagement should rest with Berton and Duquesnel.

The next day Sarah went to Duquesnel’s office again, and was introduced to Chilly, who presented her with her contract.

“Believe me, mademoiselle,” he said, “had I been alone in this matter, you would not have been engaged!”

“If you had been alone here I would not have consented to sign!” said Sarah haughtily.

For months after that, she told me, she hated Chilly. In reality, however, he was a decent little fellow, and a man of great ability, whose only fault was his obstinacy. Later on he and Sarah became fast friends, and when Sarah left the OdÉon, to return to the ComÉdie FranÇaise as the triumphant idol of the French stage, it was Chilly who went on his knees to her and implored her to reconsider her decision.

Sarah entered the OdÉon in 1866. In 1868 she was famous. In 1872 she re-entered the ComÉdie FranÇaise, where she remained eight years. In 1882 she was married, and in 1889 became a widow.

I give these dates now because the period comprised by them was that in which Sarah Bernhardt reached the supreme pinnacle of her glory, and it was during this period, also, that the most romantic episodes of her life occurred.

Le Jeu de l’Amour et du Hasard (The Game of Love and Luck), by Marivaux, was the piece in which Sarah made her dÉbut at the OdÉon. Berton and Duquesnel were mortified, Chilly was triumphant: Sarah had failed!

There was no mistaking the failure. Scarcely any applause was vouchsafed the young actress and so conspicuous was her lack of success that the piece was withdrawn within a few weeks, after playing to half-empty houses.

Chilly wanted to break her contract, but Berton and Duquesnel restrained him. Berton gave it as his opinion that Sarah was made for tragedy, whereas the play by Marivaux was a comedy, and Sarah’s part obviously unsuited to her.

Among the famous people who were in the audience the night Sarah Bernhardt made her dÉbut at the OdÉon was Alexandre Dumas the elder. After the play was over Sarah overheard Duquesnel ask him:

“What do you think of the young Sarah?”

“She has the head of a virgin and the body of a broomstick!” retorted Dumas, dryly.

Sarah was then earning the munificent sum of 100 francs (four pounds) a month. From the estate of her father she still received a small amount—not more than 200 francs monthly, and on this income was obliged to live.

For several months she worked as an understudy, Chilly obstinately refusing to consent to her taking any important rÔles.

During this period the love of Pierre Berton for his erratic little protÉgÉe grew enormously. On more than one occasion he asked her to marry him, but Sarah refused, on the ground that it would be unfair to the woman who for years had lived with Berton as his wife, and who had presented him with four children.

The fact that Berton was willing and even anxious to abandon this woman (his wife in all but name) and his family indicates the depth of his passion for Sarah Bernhardt. He confessed to me in later life after our marriage that “the days that Sarah Bernhardt consented to devote to me were like pages from immortality. One felt that one could not die!”

That Sarah returned his love is a fact too well known to need confirmation here, but I have always doubted whether she gave to Pierre the full and sincere depth of the passion he brought to her. Sarah’s was a nature too complex to harbour any deep feeling for long.

There is also the indisputable fact that at this moment she was living solely for the stage, the animating force within her being a determination that her baby son should never lack for money or advantages. Neither has he, throughout his long life.

Life at the OdÉon was toil fierce and unremitting, but Sarah loved it. She would wake at nine o’clock and read over her parts, both in bed and while she was dressing. At eleven o’clock, and often again in the afternoon, there were rehearsals of plays quite different from the one that was to be given at night.

Her evident desire to work, combined with the glorious quality of her voice, which was already becoming renowned among playgoers, brought even the manager, Chilly, round to her side. Reliability and hard work were his two fetishes. He could not forgive Sarah her thin legs, but he was madly enthusiastic over her voice.

“Oh! if you could only act!” he said to her on more than one occasion.

Fine acting is not precisely a gift of the gods; it is the ultimate result of a willingness to acquire technique by constant attention to petty details. No actor ever became great over-night who had not spent weary months in the acquisition of technique. Now, three principal acquirements go to make up stage technique. First, there is what is known as stage presence, or the ability to lose one’s own individuality in the part one is playing. Secondly, there is the speaking voice, which should be so perfected that a whisper may carry drama, pathos or humour to the topmost gallery and be understood. Thirdly, there is memory.

Sarah had the voice and she certainly had a marvellous memory. She could take the book of a new part at night and return on the following afternoon with the rÔle committed to memory. Once she had learned it, Sarah never forgot a part, even though she might be playing two different pieces, afternoon and night.

When Berton wrote Zaza, the play for which he is best known in England, she went over it with him, taking a whole night to do it. The next day Berton was to read it to an audience of managers and producers. While he was reading the third act, Sarah objected to his way of interpreting one of the parts.

“It should go like this,” she said—and forthwith she recited for fifteen minutes words which she had only read once. On comparison with the book it was found that she had not made a single mistake.

In the ’80’s I attended a picnic at St. Germain, and heard Sarah recite a part in IphigÉnie, the first play in which she appeared at the ComÉdie FranÇaise, and in which she played only on two occasions during her long career. There was never a moment after she became internationally famous when Sarah could not recite out of her prodigious memory the whole of the words of any one of fifty or sixty different plays.

I have said that her voice was becoming known in Paris. One day Georges Sand came to her dressing-room. Looking very mysterious, she said:

“There is a gentleman outside who has fallen in love with your voice!”

“Send him away!” retorted Sarah petulantly. She was in a bad humour, in consequence of a quarrel with Berton.

“You cannot send this man away, my dear!” said Madame Sand. “He is the Prince!”

“Never mind; I do not want to see him, Prince or no Prince,” declared the young actress.

After much coaxing, however, she consented to meet the “gentleman in love with her voice,” and descended to the stage, where she found Prince Napoleon talking with Louis Bouilhet. Sarah shook his hand, instead of kissing it, as was the custom, and said never a word. The Prince was furious.

“She is spiteful, your little kitten,” he said to Georges Sand.

“She is a Madonna, sire!” said the authoress.

“A Madonna who acts like a devil!” retorted the Prince, shortly, and, turning on his heel, he walked away.

He came back many times, however, and was often one of a party in Sarah’s dressing-room. The news that she was the recipient of royal favour soon got abroad, and sarcasms were printed in some of the liberal weeklies. When she read them, Sarah sent a note to the editors:

“Criticise my performances on the stage if it pleases you, but my private life should be free of insult. Furthermore, I have loyal friends who will protect my name with their swords.”

This, too, was published, and all Paris laughed at the actress who thought it an insult that her name should be linked with that of a prince. Other people in the profession thought it a pose, but Sarah was quite sincere. She was fascinated by the smooth, cynical flow of the Prince’s conversation, and she could not openly bid him remove himself from her presence. At the bottom of her heart, however, she disliked him profoundly and was at small pains to conceal it.

Once an artist of revolutionary tendencies, one Paul Deshayes, entered Sarah’s dressing-room, to find there Prince Napoleon, Madame Sand and several others. Deshayes was seeking his gloves, which he had left in the room a few minutes before. Turning to the Prince he said curtly:

“You are sitting on my gloves, monsieur!”

The Prince, turning red with anger at this unceremonious mode of address, took the gloves and flung them on the floor.

“I thought the chair was clean!” he said contemptuously.

Sarah Bernhardt jumped to her feet, picked up the gloves, and handed them to Deshayes.

Then, turning to the Prince, she said hotly:

“Politeness used to be considered a privilege of kings, sir, but I perceive that they do not teach it to princes!”

This incident also found its way into print and Sarah’s reputation gained another notch. All this time she had yet to score a genuine success on the stage.

This came towards the end of her first year at the OdÉon, in circumstances which were much commented on at the time. All Paris was in arms against Alexandre Dumas, the most maligned author who has ever lived. On the night of the premiÈre of Kean, Dumas appeared in a box at the OdÉon accompanied by his mistress, Ada Montrin.

Cries came from all over the house calling on him to “send the woman away.” Dumas tried to speak, but his voice was drowned in cat-calls. Hundreds of students stood on their seats, chanting an obscene song that had been written about Dumas.

Finally the woman and Dumas both left—the latter to take refuge behind the wings, and the former to depart from his life for ever.

Duquesnel, Chilly, Berton and the whole company were in terror when the curtain was about to be raised. They expected a warm reception and—they got it. Berton, who was playing the part of Kean, could not make his voice heard beyond the footlights. For a moment there was a question of cancelling the performance.

Then Sarah Bernhardt, in the first big rÔle of her career—that of Anna Danby—came upon the stage, and, from the first words, a hush settled over the house. Her glorious voice filled the theatre.

Calm and unflurried, though in reality intensely nervous, Sarah continued speaking her part. The words of the poet were given their exact intonation, every syllable distinct from its neighbour, and fell upon the breathless house like the limpid notes of a flute.

When she had finished, there was at first silence, and then a roar of approval. Sixty students, their hands locked together, rushed round the house and threatened to invade the stage. Sarah, appalled, believed it was a demonstration against her. Her cue came to leave the stage. She rushed off and up to her dressing-room, whence she could dimly hear the unceasing roar from the theatre.

Duquesnel, rushing in, found her white as a sheet with terror. Duquesnel himself was pale, and perspiring in great drops.

“Come!” he said to Sarah, extending his hand, “they want you!”

Sarah shuddered and shrank backwards.

“Come!” said Duquesnel again, impatiently. “I tell you they want you!—Hark, cannot you hear them calling?”

Through the open door the din from the house came with greater volume. Sarah could not distinguish a word.

“They are mad about you, child!” cried Duquesnel, as he saw she did not believe him. “They will not let the play go on until you go on and speak to them!”

Then Sarah understood that this was not failure. It was triumph, success, glory! She took Duquesnel’s arm and went hesitatingly on to the stage, not even noticing that she was still attired in the kimono which she used as a wrap between the acts.

When she appeared before the curtain pandemonium broke lose. “Sarah!” “Sarah!” “Our Sarah!” the audience yelled.

And “Our Sarah” she was to the populace of Paris from that day onwards.

She was famous. She hurried back into the wings and brought on Berton Senior, and they gave him an ovation too. But always there was the chant: “Sarah!” “Our Sarah!”

The students were mad. Sarah resolved to win them over to Dumas, and sent word for him to come on the stage. But Dumas had gone, suffocated by tears at what he believed bitterly to be the assassination of his brain-child. The next morning, when he learned the truth, he sent Sarah a note thanking her.

Sarcey was the only critic who did not join in the chorus of praise which followed in the press. Writing in the Courrier de la Semaine he stated:

“I have nothing to add to my previous opinion of Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt, who, it appears, had some success with the noisy students the other night. Her voice is exquisite, certainly, but she is just as certainly not an actress.”

The original means Sarah took to humble Sarcey and to bring him to her side will be described in the next chapter. Meanwhile, he remained her most bitter and most persevering critic.