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.

Nobody knows what caused their decision to marry. I know only one thing, namely, that not a member of the company was aware of their intention until a few hours before the actual ceremony; and then only Pierre Berton, Jeanne Bernhardt, Mary Jullien, and Madame Devoyod were let into the secret.

I was taken ill on the voyage home from Russia and Sarah thought it best for me to return to France. Thus I did not go on to London with the company, and joined it only when it returned through Paris, on its way to Italy.

What I know of Sarah Bernhardt’s marriage is therefore hearsay—only what Pierre Berton told me. The event must have made him miserable, poor man! I am sure he adored Sarah still, although weary of her caprices.

Berton was a very conscientious and honourable man; and his was the restraining influence in the Bernhardt company, whereby many pitfalls were avoided owing to his sage counsel Sarah Bernhardt’s once tender feeling for him had changed into one of extreme respect. She recognised the power of his intellect and admired his wisdom, and never forsook him, both because he was a marvellous actor of great drawing power and because he was a counter-balance in the scales to outweigh her ruinous escapades.

A great many of the company, having very good reason to hate Damala, desired to leave at once, when Sarah married him; and it was Pierre Berton who persuaded them to stay on in order to support Sarah in the trials which he knew she would shortly have to endure.

Sarah and Damala may have decided to marry during the voyage from Russia; but knowing them both as I did, I am inclined to believe the thing was arranged on the spur of the moment.

One could and can do such things in London. They are impossible in Paris, where the consent of parents is obligatory, even in the case of those who are no longer minors, and where at least a month is always consumed in absurd preliminaries and red tape.

I firmly believe that, had it been necessary for Sarah to get married in France, she would never have done it! Such a decision, in her case, required to be made and carried out practically on the spot, while she was under the influence of one of her fantastic moods. Marriage to her, I am sure, was not the solemn, semi-religious event that it is in the lives of most women. For her it was merely another escapade—the crowning one, if you like.

Almost everything else on the list of follies she had committed. Why not marriage? That, at any rate, is the opinion I have always held. But Berton had a graver conception of the matter.

In his view Sarah was so tremendously infatuated by Damala that she married him to make him wholly hers. He used to say:

“She lived in constant terror that Damala’s fancy would change, that some other woman would cross his path, and that he would leave her.

“She was completely under the fellow’s domination. If any good man, of high and noble principles, had offered Sarah his name, she would have refused him scornfully; she would have answered that she would tie her life to no man’s.

“But with Damala it was another matter. It was she who desired passionately to hold him—not the reverse. At least, such is my belief. Sarah too, when she remembered how easily she had fallen a victim to it herself, was often much perturbed at seeing how quickly women were captured by Damala’s fatal charm.

“She could think of no way to bind him to her except by marriage. So, despite her distaste for the orthodox union, she determined on the ceremony.

“She waited until we got to London, where such things can be done over-night, and then took advantage of one of Damala’s affectionate spells to persuade him to marry her. He agreed; a priest was sent for, and they were married—all in the space of a few hours.”

Damala always declared this version to be true—that it was Sarah who proposed to him and not he to her. Moreover, in fits of temper, he would tell her so before the whole company. “If I had not been crazy I would not have been caught so easily!” he would cry, beating the air with his arms.

By marrying Damala, Sarah thought to bind him to her. It was the supreme mistake of her life. Instead of keeping him she lost him.

She simply exchanged a lover for a husband, and many women have found to their cost what that means. Sarah’s disillusionment came only three weeks later.

Until the marriage, Damala had been more or less faithful to Sarah—as faithful as a nature like his allowed. But he had scarcely stepped down from the altar with his bride, than he began betraying her right and left.

He demanded that she should change her stage name to “Sarah Damala” in his honour, and when she refused he walked out of the house and disappeared.

Performances had to be abandoned during the three days he was away. Sarah was absolutely frantic. She was ready to believe anything—that he had deserted her for good, that he had fallen into the Thames, that he had run away to France, that he had committed suicide, that he had gone away with another woman.

This last theory—and Sarah would rather have lost an arm than that it should have been found true—was the correct one. Damala, previous to his marriage and unknown to Sarah, had struck up a friendship with a Norwegian girl whom he had met on board ship. It was with her that he spent those three days, scarcely a week after his marriage to Sarah.

Paris, which had gasped at the news of the wedding, was in spasms of mirth at this new unhappiness which had overtaken Sarah. It so perfectly agreed with what everyone had predicted.

“She is mad!” said Auguste Dane, the writer, when he heard of the marriage through a letter that Berton wrote to me. “He will leave her within a week!”

I remember the words so well, because they so nearly came true.

In a few days Damala returned, to find Sarah ill from anxiety and bruised pride. God knows what his excuses were, what methods he took to win his pardon! A woman in love is ever ready to believe, and Sarah was no exception.

The next day they were together again as usual.

The company went to Ostend, where it played five nights. On the last night Damala disappeared again, and was heard from two days later in Brussels, whither he had gone with a pretty Belgian acquaintance.

He rejoined Sarah in Paris, and Sarah forgave him again. He would pretend to be ill and win her pity; and once pity takes the place of resentment in a woman’s heart it is not difficult for a clever man to obtain everything he wishes.

With every month of their married life, Damala’s behaviour deteriorated. It began to be said of him that he was the most unfaithful husband in all France, which was saying a good deal.

“I saw Damala at the theatre last night,” somebody would say.

“With Sarah?”

“Sarah? No, of course not, imbecile! Sarah is now his wife!”

And so it went on. Accustomed to facile successes with women, Damala carried his infidelities to extremes. In almost every town they visited there was a new betrayal to register; and Damala now scarcely took the trouble to conceal his double life from Sarah.

One can imagine the mortification all this caused to such a proud nature as hers.

From being the idol of two hemispheres she was fast becoming (as she knew well) the laughing-stock of France; and the sole reason for her misfortunes was her insane action in marrying a man who did not understand even the first principles of honour. In place of a ring he had given her a cross to bear; and the cross was the condescending amusement of the multitudes who, a few months previously, had been ready to fall down and worship her as a demi-goddess.

“She cannot be much, after all,” said the man in the street. “See, her husband betrays her right before her eyes!”

“All those stories about her must have been true!” thought the staid and virtuous members of society. “Even her husband cannot live with her for more than a month!”

The cruellest fact about mob-psychology is that a mob is invariably ready to believe the worst. The Parisians now discovered with intense satisfaction that their idol’s feet were made of clay.

“C’est le ridicule qui tue,” declared a great French essayist. Ridicule was killing Sarah.

Never before had I seen Sarah Bernhardt suffer so fearfully from the ravages of jealousy, nor did she ever suffer so again.

Her face, within a few short months, lost that girlish look which had been its greatest charm. Lines came to features that had previously been clear of them. She became dispirited; could not be consoled; would sit for hours by herself; seemed to take little interest in what was going on about her.

Then Damala would return, like a truant schoolboy; and, after the usual scene of anger, all would be well—until the next time.

“Tu es folle—il faut prendre ton parti!” (“You are foolish—you should make up your mind to make the best of it!”) I told her repeatedly.

One day at Genoa, Damala and an actress, whom Sarah had dismissed on suspicion of a liaison with her husband, left the company and went to Monte Carlo.

Sarah was seized with a frantic fit of jealousy, stopped all performances (in spite of the tremendous loss this occasioned her); and wrote letters every hour pleading with Damala to return.

The only reply he made to these overtures was a curt note in which he informed her that he had lost 80,000 francs gambling at baccarat, and that if she would send him this money he would come back at once.

Sarah sent the enormous sum and Damala kept his word. He returned—but still with the actress!

There was a tremendous scene in the lobby of the Genoese hotel where we were staying. Sarah’s rage was directed against the woman. She ranted against her, threatened her with everything from physical violence to criminal proceedings, and ended by ordering her out of the hotel.

“She has come back for the money you owe her!” said Damala.

C’Était le comble! Sarah went straight into hysterics. But when she recovered the woman was still there, and, moreover, had a legal claim on her for her wages, so that Sarah was forced to pay.

After this incident she had a respite from matrimonial storms for several weeks. Her world revolved in and about Damala, whom (at his own request) she created managing-director of the company, with his name, as such, billed in large type everywhere.

This request of Damala’s was his undoing. It opened Sarah’s eyes as nothing else could have done to the real worthlessness of the man she had made her husband.

Damala she knew to be congenitally unfaithful, but her pride could not endure the further discovery that she had married an incompetent.

As manager of a theatrical company on tour he was a miserable failure. He wasted thousands of francs, became tangled in his accounts, could not handle other people, had no genius whatever for organisation. Had it not been for their affection for Sarah, the members of the company would have voted that it should be disbanded.

Foolish contracts were made with theatres in strange towns, hotel arrangements omitted, trains missed, properties lost—all those incidents occurred which indicate bad management and which demoralise a company.

To avoid a crash, Sarah allowed her business sense to dominate her other feelings, and there was a welcome return of her old authoritative character. We greeted with enthusiasm her domineering ways in place of Damala’s blundering and bullying incompetency.

From Head of the Company, Damala became a mere Prince Consort. There was a disgraceful scene when she made her decision known to him. He called her horrible names—“long-nosed Jewess” was one of the milder ones.

Then, characteristically, he had his revenge by making open love to one of Sarah’s lesser rivals.

“If a man quit me for a Queen,” said Lady Dudley, in the days of Elizabeth, “then I will be proud, for it will have taken the Queen to tear him from me; but if a man quit me for a Duchess, then am I like to die of shame.”

Damala had quit his Queen for a Duchess, and Sarah was “like to die of shame”; but she cured herself by writing Damala a letter, telling him never to return.

Damala did return the next day, however, and in Sarah’s absence carried off several articles of considerable value belonging to her. This happened in Paris after he had played with her in a piece at the Porte St. Martin theatre, which she had just purchased.

Damala then returned to his abandoned diplomatic career, but his habits soon forced him to give up active work.

Despite the fact that she had been born a Jewess and was only baptised into the Catholic faith, Sarah had strict ideas of a sort about religion. She refused to divorce Damala, contenting herself with a semi-legal separation whereby, in return for certain sums she sent to him monthly, he agreed never to re-enter her life.

Five years later, however, Damala sent a message to Sarah saying that he was dying in Marseilles and imploring her to forgive him and take him back.

The strength of the love which she must once have borne him is shown by the fact that, immediately she received this message, she abandoned her performances in Paris, rushed to the bedside of her husband—whom she found wasted from disease and drugs—and nursed him back again into some semblance of health.

Damala promised to leave morphine alone and they went on tour together; but the drug, to which Jeanne Bernhardt had already succumbed, proved too strong for him.

Once, at Milan, he was nearly arrested for exhibiting himself naked at the Hotel de Ville (which is an hotel and not a town hall). His body was a mass of sores occasioned by the drug.

I was a member of the company on the famous tour Sarah made with Damala in Turkey. We played in Constantinople and Smyrna, and on taking the boat for Cairo we ran into a terrible storm.

Three times we tried to get into the Bay of Alexandria, and each time failed. Finally the ship was anchored until calmer weather came. Sarah was violently sick, and, on recovering, asked the steward to bring her the delicacies she had had brought on board for her own special use at table.

These delicacies included several cases of champagne and others of fruit and pÂtÉ de foie gras, of which Sarah was particularly fond.

Imagine her fury when the steward returned with the information that Damala had eaten all the fruit and had consumed all the champagne, and that nothing was left for Sarah except the regular rough fare of the steamer.

Shortly before his death, Damala was given a part by Sarah in the play Lena, at the ThÉÂtre des VariÉtÉs. During the second performance he was so drunk that he could not say a word.

A few weeks later he died. Sarah was with him until the last. This was in 1889.