“Enough of Sarah Bernhardt! Now that she has finally left the ComÉdie FranÇaise, let us forget her!”

This was the slogan of Sarah’s enemies in the year 1880. And many of her friends thought, with a sigh of relief, that they were to be spared for a little while, at any rate, the pain of the extraordinary publicity the actress provoked.

Sarah was now thirty-six years old. Her son, Maurice, had reached his seventeenth year, and was already causing her a good deal of trouble, due to her eccentric way of bringing him up.

She was original in her treatment of his childish faults. When he was six, he persisted in a habit of chewing the tips of his gloves, and no correction, apparently, could cure him of the habit. Exasperated, Sarah one day made him take a pair of gloves to the kitchen, fry them in butter, and eat them! The cure proved effective.

I do not intend to devote much of this biography to Maurice Bernhardt. He is still alive, and I understand he is writing his own memoirs. It is my opinion, however, that it was not he himself but Sarah’s own conception of the boon of motherhood which throughout her life was perhaps its outstanding influence.

Maurice was a wilful, headstrong, nervous child; strong for his size, and a handful for the various nurses who were engaged to look after him. Sarah was stern with him at times, indulgent at others; and she educated him to rely upon her, and never once, even in her old age, did she rely upon him.

When he was twelve, Maurice was already quite a “man about town,” preferring adult companionship and evincing precocious likes and dislikes. When he was fifteen, Sarah settled a large sum on him and before he was twenty his income from her was 60,000 francs annually. She always told her friends that she did not mind what he did with the money, so long as he dressed himself properly.

Thus, almost from infancy, Maurice was accustomed to an amount of luxury that was far in advance of his mother’s real circumstances.

The sole thing on which she insisted was that he should learn the art of fencing, so as to defend his life in case of a duel. This art, when once learned, got the youngster into several scrapes, which cost Sarah a good deal of money.

As a small child Maurice appeared with Sarah on the stage on one or two occasions, but he evinced no great talent for the theatre. He also, when a young man, attempted the art of playwriting, assisted by his mother, but met with no greater success. In later years he tried to persuade his mother to make him general manager of the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre, in her stead. It was the only thing she ever denied him.

Sarah’s various studios and flats were always filled with pictures of Maurice at all ages—many of them being sketches or paintings by Sarah herself.

So much for Maurice Bernhardt. He was an affectionate son, and if he has not been exceptionally useful during his long life, it is the fault of his haphazard upbringing. He is now a father, a grandfather, a member of the best Paris clubs, a well-known figure in baccarat rooms and on race-courses, and he still maintains his excellent reputation as a swordsman. Sarah died in his arms.

It was in 1880, before she left for her first American tour—in October of that year—that Sarah Bernhardt first organised a company of her own. This was placed by her under the paternal direction of FÉlix Duquesnel, Sarah’s old friend at the OdÉon, and consisted of nine artistes, who had been carefully selected for the purpose of supporting her on tour. They were Madame Kalb, Pierre Berton, Mary Jullien, Jeanne Bernhardt, Madame Devoyod, Jean DieudonnÉ, L. Talbot, J. Train and myself. I was, of course, the youngster of the troupe.

Our rÉpertoire at this time consisted of eight plays: Hernani, Froufrou, La Dame aux CamÉlias, Le Sphinx, L’EtrangÈre, La Princesse George, Adrienne Lecouvreur and PhÈdre. Let me now set forth the story of how La Dame aux CamÉlias, one of Sarah’s greatest triumphs, proved a failure until she brought her own genius to bear on the play and transformed it into a masterpiece.

La Dame aux CamÉlias, as a matter of fact, was in its original form written by Dumas fils after earnest consultation with Sarah. It was never played, however, and lay for some years neglected in a drawer. One day Dumas took it out and read a few pages of the second act to Sarah, for the purpose of eliciting her opinion on the piece.

“Let me take it with me!” she asked, and Dumas gave the manuscript to her.

A few days later she brought it back to him with a third of it crossed out and corrected. New lines had been added to practically all the important passages, and part of the second act had been cut out entirely.

“There!” she told him. “Your play is better like that! If you will revise it as I have marked the manuscript, I will play it and make it a success.”

“It is I who am the playwright and not you, mademoiselle!” he said angrily.

Bernhardt turned on her heel.

“Very well!” she flung at him over her shoulder; “a day will come when you will beg me to produce your play!”

Dumas refused to be influenced by such criticism, and eventually the play was produced, in a small way, at the ComÉdie, and then at another theatre, but had no success at either. Sarah’s amendments and suggestions had been ignored.

After Sarah had organised her own company, Pierre Berton one day went to her with the information that Dumas wished to see her.

“What about?” asked Sarah.

“About a play called La Dame aux CamÉlias. We were reading it together last night and I believe it can be played by us with success. In fact, it is a play absolutely written for you!”

“Did you tell Dumas that?” asked Sarah, grimly.

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that he agreed with me.”

“And that was all?”

“That was all—except that he asked that I should bring the matter to your attention.” Sarah laughed. “I told Dumas that he would one day beg me to play this thing for him,” she said, “and you may tell him that if he wants me to, he must do just that—beg!”

Berton must have taken the message diplomatically to Dumas, for the next day the latter was announced at Sarah’s house.

I was not present at the interview, but at the end of it Sarah informed us that La Dame aux CamÉlias was to be included in our rÉpertoire.

Knowing Sarah’s temperament and her obstinacy, I presume Dumas begged. At any rate, the book of the play, as it was placed in our hands shortly afterwards, contained all the original corrections which she had made and which Dumas had at first ignored.

We produced La Dame (as it was always called) at Brussels, whither we had gone on the earnest representations of King LÉopold, who was still greatly enamoured of Sarah.

In Brussels La Dame obtained no success whatever. The Belgians much preferred Adrienne Lecouvreur and Froufrou. It was in the last-named play that Sarah had scored her biggest success in London, on her second visit as an independent artiste. Sarcey, who had written what he called “Sarah’s Epitaph” when she left the ComÉdie, saying that it was “time to send naughty children to bed,” was compelled to make a special journey to London in order to write reviews of Sarah’s extraordinary productions there.

Instead of her light becoming dimmer, it blazed higher and higher with each month that separated her from her “imprisonment” at the ComÉdie FranÇaise.

Yes ... imprisonment was what Sarah considered it.

“At last I am free and my own mistress,” she said. “Perrin cannot make me work when I don’t want to, and all the critics can go to the devil!”

It was predicted that the fine of one hundred thousand francs imposed on Sarah for breaking her contract with the ComÉdie would be a blow from which she would find it hard to recover.

“We shall hear less of our dear Sarah now! She will go away and leave us in peace!” wrote Paul de St. Victor, her ancient enemy of the Ruy Blas banquet.

But instead of sinking under the blow, Sarah only worked the harder. She was absolutely tireless at this period. Her visits to London and to Brussels were organised chiefly to avoid the process-servers, who were hammering at the door of her house in Paris with blue papers ordering her to pay the hundred thousand francs.

Sarah had not then the money to pay her fine, but for one full year her creditors could not legally obtain a judgment against her by default (which would have meant the sacrifice of her house, and of all its treasures). So after they had made the customary three visits to her Paris home, had knocked thrice on the door, and had instituted condemnation proceedings, Sarah returned to Paris and set about organising a whirlwind tour of the provinces, to precede her departure for America.

Sarah met the Prince and Princess of Wales at Brussels, and charmed and was charmed by them. They saw her in Froufrou while the guests of the King and Queen of the Belgians. This was the beginning of a long and precious friendship between Sarah and the Princess (afterwards Queen Alexandra) which lasted until Sarah’s death. After Sarah’s Brussels visit the Princess—who was by birth Danish, as everybody knows—obtained for us a Royal command to perform before the King and Queen of Denmark at Copenhagen. Five performances only were asked for, and for these Sarah demanded 120,000 francs and our expenses. The sum was immediately agreed to.

Sarah did not like Denmark. She was in a bad humour throughout the visit. We were lent the Royal yacht, on which to make a trip on the fjords. It was a lovely day and I can hear still the beautiful voices of the Upsal Choir, blending so perfectly with the grandeur of the landscape.

Vicomte de Bondy, an attachÉ then at the French Legation, met us on the trip and begged me to introduce him to Sarah. I agreed, but when we approached her we were dismayed to hear her giving her opinion of the country to a friend, in no uncertain terms.

“Je m’en fiche de leur pays! Ils m’embÊtent!” she cried. The nearest translation to this, in English slang, would be: “I’m fed up with their country! They bore me to death!” Only the language was a trifle stronger!

When these phrases reached our ears the Vicomte stopped suddenly. Then he raised his hat, and turned on his heel.

“I do not think I want to meet your Sarah!” he said shortly, and forthwith he disappeared from our party.

I recounted the incident to Sarah the next day, as we sat on deck of a steamer which was carrying us back to France. “And he was a Frenchman!” she exclaimed. “Why, what you heard me say was nothing! I said a great deal more to the Crown Prince, and he only laughed!”

Sarah’s freedom of language was at times embarrassing.

Baron Magnus, the then German Minister in Denmark, was an old inhabitant of Paris, and had known Sarah in the days before the war. But since 1870 Sarah could not bear to look at a German.

When the baron got up at a banquet, therefore, and, raising a glass of champagne, jovially proposed her health, the actress could not restrain her anger. She sprang to her feet and raised her glass high in the air, to the astonishment of the King, the Queen and various other members of the Royal family who were seated round her—and probably, it must be admitted, to their secret amusement.

“I accept your toast, Monsieur the Minister of Prussia,” she cried, “but only on condition that you extend it to include the whole of La Belle France!”

Baron Magnus turned white. He could think of nothing to say, and he sat down. The band struck up the “Marseillaise” and then, courteously enough, considering what had passed, he got on his feet again.

Long afterwards, he and Sarah became very good friends. But he never tired of telling the story of how Sarah had startled a King and Queen and humbled an Imperial Ambassador.

On September 4, 1880, we left Paris on our first tour of the provinces under Duquesnel’s managership. The tour, which lasted twenty-eight days, was a tremendous success, and in October, a few days after our return to Paris, Sarah left for America under Abbey’s management. I did not go with her, my family being unwilling that I should make the journey before having completed my studies.