Sarah’s first tour of the United States and Canada occupied seven months, during which she visited fourteen states and four provinces, played in more than fifty theatres and appeared before the public more than 150 times.

When she returned to France, warships fired salutes, the entire city of Havre was beflagged and illuminated, and some of the most distinguished persons in France were on the quay to greet her.

She had departed an enfant terrible, to use the mot of Sarcey; she returned an idol, feverishly acclaimed. Enfin, France was once more to salute its Sarah!

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.

The theatre has always been a cult in France, much more so than in any other nation, but in the sixties and seventies it was a cult practised only by the few who possessed the requisite education to understand the difficult verse, the delightful satire, the delicate irony of the poets whose work then constituted nine-tenths of the plays performed. Or, on the other hand, there were the so-called popular theatres, but these were vulgar burlesques of what the popular theatre is to-day.

It was Sarah Bernhardt, more than anyone else, who transformed, with her magic touch, the theatre in France from the superior, intellectual toy of the cultured few to the amusement and recreation of the many. This she accomplished not only by her insistence on dramatic values, as much as on literary excellence—on scenic perfection as much as on the handling of phrases—but by her own personal genius in finding the “common touch.”

When she returned from the United States, it was to find preparations being made for her to play ThÉodora, the new play by Victorien Sardou, who was just then coming to the fore. But several other matters intervened.

First, she fell in love with Philippe Garnier, an actor of considerable talent; secondly, Garnier persuaded her to make a Grand Tour of Europe; thirdly, she was introduced to Jules Paul Damala, who took her away from Garnier and made her his wife; fourthly, Victorien Sardou, on the advice of Pierre Berton, withdrew his offer asking her to play ThÉodora and suggested that instead she should play FÉodora, an older play by him and one well-tried by public favour.

These events tumbled one after another into the life of Sarah Bernhardt, and all had their influence on it.

She first became really intimate with Philippe Garnier at a banquet given to celebrate her return. I remember that Sarah gave a demonstration at this banquet of how the Americans ate with their knives and fingers, and kept us all convulsed by her description of American food.

“Mon ami,” she said to the actor DÉcori, who sat next me, “you would not believe it—the Americans never take more than a quarter of an hour to dine, and they eat in whichever order the cook has prepared the dishes. If the fruit is ready, then they eat that first! Ugh! It was terrible!” She shuddered.

The American cuisine was always one of Sarah’s pet abominations, and on other visits to the United States she was careful to take her own cook as well as a supply of food, wines and condiments. When Edison invited her in 1890 to one of his country houses, she is said to have arrived there with a cook of her own and an entire kitchen staff!

Though Sarah herself liked to make fun of the Americans, she never allowed anyone else to do so; and when DorÉ, who had visited America, related a humorous anecdote somewhat too cutting in its sarcasm, Sarah caught him up sharply. DorÉ replied with equal acerbity, and it was Garnier who distinguished himself by leaping into the breach and smoothing down the ruffled feathers of the two friends.

Sarah noticed him, began an animated conversation with him, and found him spirituel—in the French sense of the word—well-informed and charming. She invited him to call and see her.

He called frequently, and a week later was made a star member of Sarah’s company. It was Garnier who insisted that she should exploit the publicity gained from her American tour by undertaking at once another whirlwind tour of Europe, this time going as far as Russia.

The prospect appealed to Sarah, but she was tired and not over-anxious to undertake the monumental work of organising such an expedition. So Garnier did this for her, and within two months had the itinerary completed.

In the meantime Sarah had made a most tragic acquaintance—that of Damala.

This man was a Greek, of good family, who had originally been destined for diplomacy, and had come to France to pursue his studies. In Paris he had rapidly acquired the reputation of being the “handsomest man in Europe.”

He was tall, physically of classic beauty, and with a passionate, Oriental face, which was dominated by a pair of warm brown eyes, shielded by lashes of girlish length.

“The ‘Diplomat Apollo’ was the name by which he was jocularly known among his friends; and jealous husbands and lovers talked of him as the most dangerous man in Paris.”

He had had numerous affairs before he met and fell in love, after his Oriental fashion, with Sarah Bernhardt. One was with the wife of Paul Meissonnier, a Parisian banker, whose reputation he had ruined to the extent of forcing her to leave France.

Another was with the daughter of a Vaucluse magistrate, who left her parents and a comfortable home to follow Damala to Paris, where he deserted her when her baby was born. This girl wrote a book exposing Damala, after he had married Sarah Bernhardt, but the book was suppressed. I never heard what became of her. Perhaps the Seine could tell.

Young, beautiful and a dare-devil, Damala, when he met Bernhardt, was a figure to delight the gods of evil. There was no vice to which he was not addicted, no evil thing which he would not attempt. His Oriental parties, at which those taking part divested themselves of their clothing and plunged naked into baths of champagne, were the talk of Paris.

It was inevitable that Bernhardt, the famous actress, and Damala, the almost equally notorious bon viveur, should eventually meet. Each knew the reputation of the other, and their curiosity was only the more whetted thereby.

Each delighted to play with fire, and especially with the dangerously devastating fire which smoulders eternally within the human soul.

Bernhardt prided herself on her ability to conquer men, to reduce them to the level of slaves; Damala vaunted his ability as a hunter and a spoiler of women.

No man, said Bernhardt, could long resist her imperious will; no woman, said Damala, could long remain impervious to his fatal charm—and to prove it he would exhibit with pride the clattering bones in his closet.

Like grains of mercury in a bowl of sand, their two natures were inevitably attracted towards each other. Both were serenely confident of the issue of that coming clash of wills.

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.

He was beautiful and brilliant, but only the shell was left of his manhood, which he had burned out years before his time, for he was younger than Sarah by three years. Sarah, despite all the marvellous things which she had already accomplished, had the best of her span of life before her. Damala was indolent, unambitious except as regards women, hot-headed, quick to take up an insult, and an unscrupulous fiend when his passions were aroused. He had the presence and manners of a gentleman and the mind of a chimpanzee.

Even before he met Sarah, Damala was a victim to the vice of morphine, and in that curious strata of society which is composed of drug-takers, he met Jeanne Bernhardt, Sarah’s sister, who had no right to the name, but who had assumed it at the behest of their mother.

Jeanne had succumbed to morphine before she was twenty-five. She had followed Sarah’s footsteps into the theatre, but she had none of the talent of her great half-sister, nor had she the beauty, despite her early promise.

She was a peculiar-looking woman, with dark hair, a thin face, deep green pools for eyes, a weak chin and uncertain mouth. She could fill a small part in a play, with the aid of Sarah’s careful coaching, but she could not be depended upon; and at times, under the influence of her special drug, would commit the worst blunders. On more than one occasion she had almost ruined a play.

Poor Jeanne! She had much that was good in her. She loved Sarah with a passion which was extraordinary, to say the least, considering the earlier lack of devotion to one another that characterised the household of Julie Bernard.

That poor lady was now dead, at the age of fifty-one. She had lived long enough, however, to see her unwanted child rise to heights of fame that were almost dizzy, when regarded from her own comparatively small eminence of beauty and coquette.

The baby she had left to the tender mercies of a concierge’s wife, and all but abandoned; the thin, delicate child who had wanted to be a nun, and whom she had never really understood; that being whom she had created, fruit of perhaps the only genuine passion of her empty life, had become the favourite toast of the world, the darling of two hemispheres, with kings paying homage to her beauty and her art.

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; though her constitution, which had once been delicate, might now seem to be made of spun steel, in reality she was still delicate—extremely so. It was her will that triumphed, the will to accomplish, to create, to live—the will which is another name for genius.

But little Jeanne, the centre of her mother’s fond hopes, had neither strength of body nor power of will. She had not genius, only a facility for mimicry. The life that sustained and exhilarated Sarah, ruined and finally killed her.

Sarah’s feeling for Jeanne was the pity which is akin to love, and not the sisterly devotion she might have felt had her earlier history been less unfortunate. She helped the girl all she could, saw that she had work, and that she was able to earn sufficient money. She took her to America, in the hope that travel and the change into a newer, freer atmosphere would work the miracle she so ardently desired.

Sarah’s hatred for drugs was one of the abiding passions of her life. She herself had such an unquenchable spirit within her that she could not imagine the plight of those who were compelled to indulge a fanciful morbidity with such artificial stimulants.

Once, shortly after discovering that her half-sister was taking morphine, she thrashed Jeanne with a riding-whip and locked her in her bedroom. There for four days she kept her a prisoner, denying her both food and drug in an unscientific attempt to tame her desires, which, of course, ended in failure. Despite all Sarah’s efforts, Jeanne slipped gradually down the hill and into the pit which is the inevitable fate of those who seek the bliss of this artificial paradise.

Morphine had come into general use as a medicine during the war of 1870, and many doctors and soldiers had learned to listen to its dangerous appeal. They taught its use to their women, and the alleged miracles worked by the drug became noised abroad. Its use became almost fashionable!

People who frequented the salons took it shamelessly, just as anyone else would take a glass of champagne. It was said that opium dulled your cares and finally made you forget them, but that morphine kept you conscious of them and actually made you enjoy them!

Jeanne and Damala were members of a group of morphine-takers connected with the stage, who made no secret of their vice. Damala was a fair amateur actor—it was in this direction and not diplomacy that his ambitions lay—and delighted to frequent the coulisses (as the French term the wings), the Green Room, and the other mysterious haunts which lie behind the footlights. Many were his victories in this half-world of pleasure and of work.

When Jeanne spoke of Damala to Sarah, the latter felt herself repelled and yet fascinated. Outwardly she denounced him, but inwardly she was enormously interested in this notorious man, and longed to meet him.

Unconscious of the insidious spell that was at work, enchaining their two destinies, Sarah privately determined to see this arrogant monster, this darling of the drawing-rooms, this man who was called the handsomest being since Apollo.

They met finally at the house of a friend who was curious to see what they would do when brought together.