stood in pure white satin before the nurse and reproached her for her insult to the memory of Romeo. That is a picture no years can destroy." Sarah Bernhardt is, of course, almost of the present time. Yet, a book of this sort would be incomplete without referring to this world-artist, and giving a slight sketch of her fascinating and many-sided personality. Sarcey pictures for us the manner of her admission to the Paris Conservatoire. There was an examination to be passed and all that this little girl knew was the fable of the "Two Pigeons;" but she had no sooner recited the lines "Deux pigeons s'aimaient d'amour tendre than Auber summoned her to his side. "Enough," he said. "Come here." And the little girl, who was pale and thin, but who had wonderfully intelligent eyes, did as she was told. "Your name is Sarah?" he questioned. "Yes, sir, by birth; but I have been baptized." "She has been baptized," said Auber, turning to his colleagues. "It would have been a pity if such a pretty child had not. She has said her fable of the 'Two Pigeons' very well. She must be admitted." And admitted she thereupon was, this conventbred Jewess of thirteen years. Almost at once she began to show the genius that was in her and, by the time she was twenty-five, was drawing a salary of six thousand francs at the Comédie Français. Her talent was so undeniable and her success so immediate that there seems to have been absolutely no reason why she should have strained constantly after personal notoriety as she is generally believed to have done. Her own version of the matter, however, is that the reporters would never let her alone. There may have been considerable truth in this; apparently, it was an uncomplimentary newspaper criticism which caused her to send in her resignation to the Comédie and set off, in 1879, for the conquest of London. From London she embarked for her first visit to America and was led into New York-and thence all over the States by the gentle hand of Manager Jarrett, who saw to it that Sarah of the golden voice obtained everything that she wanted in the way of publicity. Her account of the tactful manner in which Jarrett met the banal inquiries of the first relay of reporters is amusing. She had just replied to the stock inquiry, "Which is your favourite rôle?" with "That is no concern of yours!" and was about to answer in similar vein the question, "What do you eat as soon as you wake in the morning?" when Jarrett interposed and suavely assured the reporter that the first food consumed daily by his precious French star was oatmeal, and that later on she always indulged herself in mussels! 1 None the less, the newspapers generally were very kind to Mme. Bernhardt during this initial visit to 1 "Memories of My Life," Sarah Bernhardt. America. The New York Tribune, on the morning after her début,' devoted two columns to a consideration of the event, its critic characterizing the distinguished French actress as "one of Nature's voices divinely ordained to interpret beauty." "Madame Bernhardt," continues this reviewer, "is clearly a woman of genius, but we should not from this performance infer that it is a genius of the highest order. There was no hint of the great dominant brain of such a woman as Cushman or the awful power of imaginative exaltation that was the unrivalled excellence of Rachel. . . . Her power is, beyond all doubt, the magnetic force and fascination of a nature genially fired by emotion, and a nervous system sensitive to every passing wave of excitement, but it is the genius of a woman who is strange rather than great, bizarre rather than glorious, portentous rather than overwhelming; and her art is the flute and not the organ. . . . To greet her last night there had come together one of the most splendid audiences ever gathered within the walls of a theatre. She has made a very brilliant beginning in America. She may not be a great woman; we do not think she is . . . but she is a wonderful person; she exerts a strange and thrilling power, she is accomplished in theatrical finesse; and within a certain field, which seems to be limited to sentimental realism, she is a great actress." There is no question that the crowd enormously enjoyed Bernhardt, not only the crowd within the playhouse, but the crowd outside. All the approaches to 1 Bernhardt's first appearance in America was at Booth's Theatre, November 9, 1880, the play given being " Adrienne Lecouvreur." Booth's theatre were blocked with people hours before the performance began that first night, as high as twenty-five dollars being paid for a single seat; at the box-office alone more than seven thousand dollars were taken in. After the performance the immense throng adjourned to the street outside the Albermarle Hotel, where Gilmore's Band serenaded the actress in "Marseillaise" and "Star Spangled Banner." These attentions the wonderful Frenchwoman appeared to enjoy quite as much as she had enjoyed the bouquets rained on the stage at the close of her performance. She appears to have similarly enjoyed being the centre of the admiring throng that flocked to enjoy a private view of her paintings and sculptures one afternoon during this engagement. On this occasion she was described as: "Dressed in white, with a cloud of lace hiding in its soft folds the materials of her dress, and with long loose gloves coming up to her shoulders and meeting the short sleeves that she wore like, and yet unlike, the pictures of her that we see in the shops. She is not more than common tall nor is she absurdly thin. She looks much more like an American woman and a New Yorker than a Frenchwoman, and not in the least like a Jew. Her hair, worn in a frizzle over her low forehead, is colourless and characterless, and her face takes on the set expression of indiscriminate cordiality of greeting, only to lose it every other minute and assume a sadly wearied look. But her vivacity is wonderful and so, also, is her self-possession. Every one who was introduced to her went away with the dazed conviction he or she was the especial object of the lady's cordiality.” |