She of the Golden Voice

After the death of Sarah Bernhardt, Maurice Baring wrote: the greatest statues of the world, the most astonishing wonders of beauty on earth, the noblest things artistic genius has produced, are nothing but shattered fragments borne along on the millstream of time; and to them is added today a flower that withered a while ago — namely, "Sarah Bernhardt."

Sarah had passed seventy, and was a helpless, crippled woman, when this English man of letters wrote of her, voicing his deep regret and profound sorrow at her departure from the stage of life. She was a historical accident, a patent set upon the emptiness within her, a striking figure, resolute and managing, laying down with her own hands the designs of the rules of her life. She dominated the European stage in all its phases throughout her working life — successful at one time, failing at another. It is known that only in this period she was baptized in the Catholic Church and entered the convent, which before long expelled her. And how should the likes of Sarah settle down in a convent!

A short while afterward she studied the art of drawing, and won the first prize for some of her work at the Columbia school of arts. But the Duc de Morny, a friend of her mother's, advised her to enter the "Conservatoire." It is related that at the entrance examination she read some pieces of "La Fontaine," whereupon one member of the examining committee cried out: "This girl has a voice of gold" — and the world thereafter was not to contradict that saying.

Sarah was of a difficult, stubborn temper during her first years at the Comédie Française, and failed in many of her undertakings. In this same period she loved — and it was perhaps her first love — a Belgian aristocrat, the Prince "Henri de Ligne," and bore him a child whom she called Maurice. Here begins her earnest struggle and striving in life, for the sake of her son's livelihood. In 1869, before she had reached twenty-five, she acted in François Coppée's play "Le Passant" at the "Odéon" theater, and gained extraordinary fame in a single night. This was surely the happiest period of her life: she was young in years, gay, wrapped about with esteem and vitality, and she had lifted the veil from her artistic genius; and what added to her happiness was her son, whom she loved with all her being — though he did not distract her from her love of "Pierre Berton." In 1870 she threw herself into supporting every current that worked to fight Prussia; she was ardent for her nation and her homeland — so much so that she reached old age before they could persuade her to visit Germany. When the siege closed around Paris, the "Odéon" theater was made a hospital, and Sarah Bernhardt was a nurse in that stretch of time. What further spread her name upon the lips of every European was her acting in Victor Hugo's play "Ruy Blas," and her return to act at the Comédie Française, opposite the great "Mounet-Sully." She was likewise known for eccentricity of character: she was on the threshold of seventy when she asked one of her admirers to present her with a coffin, which remained beside her bed for the rest of her life; often she would choose to sleep in it, or to have photographs taken in it. At that time she began to collect strange animals — lions and monkeys — for her garden; she always bathed in milk, and would go disguised in boys' clothing at the public clubs, until many took her for a young man. It is said that during this period she began to drink greedily, and her lovers were past counting.

A strange legend was woven about her, following certain risks she took in London in the year 1880, whereupon the Comédie Française dismissed her from its service; so she traveled to America at her own expense, and there played the part of "La Dame aux Camélias," rousing the enthusiasm of the public and amassing a fortune not to be despised — as well as gathering strange animals for her garden. And she returned to Europe a rich lady, of widespread renown, the manager of her own affairs, until death overtook her in 1923.

In 1882 she married a handsome Greek actor named "Damala," who was among the forces that wrecked her happiness, by his faithlessness to her; he met his end in 1889.

Between 1890 and 1915 — that is, after one of her legs was disabled — her artistic star blazed so brightly that the crowds streamed in from every quarter to hear "the golden voice." Before the First World War she used to pass her days with her son Maurice and his family on an island near the shores of "Brittany," in a dwelling she called "the Fort."

Her leg was disabled, and her years had climbed past seventy, in 1916, when her countrymen named her "the proud wounded one." She returned to the stage after the war and played one of her most splendid roles, in Louis Verneuil's play "Daniel"; she played the same role in London in 1922, and in December — that is, after she had reached seventy-seven — she fell into her final illness, and died in Paris in March of 1923.

The contemporaries of this actress describe her matchless power, her wondrous magnetism, her angelic voice, and that gleaming radiance that accompanied her all her life long. She acted for the most famous playwrights and played parts in a great many plays, and in all of this she worked with diligence and devotion, lavishing all her artistic gifts upon the piece in her hands. She was generous to those she loved, an exemplary mother to her son, and courageous; and the strangest thing in her was that vitality which her life never exhausted — that, together with her strange madness, endears her to the bosom of history.

"May Agate" relates in her book "Madame Sarah" that while the great actress was performing "L'Aiglon," the author "Rostand" came one night and entered her private suite; she stretched out her hand and began to ruffle the hairs of his head — she was then past sixty, and Rostand, who had loved her a long while, was twenty-three years her junior — and she said to him teasingly: "I see your head is going bald, my dear; you must look after it!!"

When Sarah was exhilarated, and reached the summit in her acting, she would repeat this phrase: "God was present with me tonight." But her rival "Sophie Croizette" drew a portion of the public to her own side, and so the audience of playgoers split into Bernhardtists and Croizettists; on which Sarah remarked: the shopkeepers and property-owners were with Sophie, while the artists and the students crowded to my side. And she used to insist that the angels were always beside her. What admits of no dispute is that she was a turbulent woman, unsteady of opinion; but she was courageous, devoted to her work, careless of herself, ablaze with feeling. In sum: she was a genius who shone throughout her life, and one of those whose music, and the splendor of whose light, time grieves to have lost.