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My Dear Huret,

You have given me an attack of vertigo. I have been reading your biography of our illustrious friend. Its rapid, nervous style, its accumulation of dates and facts, its hurried rush of scenery and events flying past as though seen from an express train, all help to attain what I imagine must have been your object—to give the reader vertigo. I have got it.

I knew all these things, but I had forgotten them. They are so many that no one even attempts to reckon them up. We are accustomed to admire Sarah. “An extraordinary woman,” we say, without at all realizing how true the remark is. And when we find ourselves suddenly confronted with an epic narrative such as yours; with such a series of battles and victories, expeditions and conquests, we stand amazed. We expected that there was more to tell than we knew, but not quite so much more! Yes, here is something we had quite forgotten, and here again is something more! All the early struggles and difficulties and unfair opposition! All the adventures and freaks of fancy! Twenty triumphs and ten escapades on a page! You cannot turn the leaves without awakening an echo of fame. Your brain reels. There is something positively alarming about this impetuous feminine hand that wields sceptre, thyrsus, dagger, fan, sword, bauble, banner, sculptor’s chisel, and horsewhip. It is overwhelming. You begin to doubt. But all this is told us by Huret, or, in other words, by History, and we believe. No other life could ever have been so full of activity. The poet I was used to admire in her the Queen of Attitude and the Princess of Gesture; I wonder now whether the other poet I am ought not to still more admire in her the Lady of Energy.

What a way she has of being both legendary and modern! Her golden hair is a link between her and fairyland, and do not words change into pearls and diamonds as they fall from her lips? Has she not worn the fairy’s sky-blue robe, and is not her voice the song of the lark at heaven’s gate? She may be an actress following an impresario, but she is none the less a star fallen from the sky of the Thousand and One Nights, and something of the mysterious blue ether still floats about her. But just as the enchanted bark gives way to the great Atlantic liner, just as the car drawn by flying frogs and the carriage made out of a pumpkin vanish before the Sarah Bernhardt saloon-car, so in this story of to-day, intelligence, independence, and intrepidity have replaced the miraculous interventions in the tales of long ago. This heroine has no protecting fairy but herself. Sarah is her own godmother. Inflexible will is her only magic wand. To guide her through so many strange and wonderful events to her final apotheosis, she has no genius but her own.

It seems to me, Jules Huret, that the life of Mme. Sarah Bernhardt will perhaps form the greatest marvel of the nineteenth century. It will develop into a legend. To describe her tours round the world, with their ever-changing scenes and actors, their beauties and absurdities, to make the locomotives and steamers speak, to portray the swelling of seas and the rustling of robes, to fill up the intervals of heroic recitative with speaking, singing, shouting choruses of poets, savages, kings, and wild animals: this would need a new Homer built up of Théophile Gautier, Jules Verne, and Rudyard Kipling.

All this, or something like it, courses through my brain while my attack of giddiness wears off. Now I feel better; I am myself again, and I try to decide what to say to you, my dear friend, in conclusion. After reflection, here it is—

I have had an attack of vertigo. There is no doubt about that. But all these things that I have known only in the telling—all these journeys, these changing skies, these adoring hearts, these flowers, these jewels, these embroideries, these millions, these lions, these one hundred and twelve rôles, these eighty trunks, this glory, these caprices, these cheering crowds hauling her carriage, this crocodile drinking champagne—all these things, I say, which I have never seen, astonish, dazzle, delight, and move me less than something else which I have often seen: this—

A brougham stops at a door; a woman, enveloped in furs, jumps out, threads her way with a smile through the crowd attracted by the jingling of the bell on the harness, and mounts a winding stair; plunges into a room crowded with flowers and heated like a hothouse; throws her little beribboned handbag with its apparently inexhaustible contents into one corner, and her bewinged hat into another; takes off her furs and instantaneously dwindles into a mere scabbard of white silk; rushes on to a dimly-lighted stage and immediately puts life into a whole crowd of listless, yawning, loitering folk; dashes backwards and forwards, inspiring every one with her own feverish energy; goes into the prompter’s box, arranges her scenes, points out the proper gesture and intonation, rises up in wrath and insists on everything being done over again; shouts with fury; sits down, smiles, drinks tea and begins to rehearse her own part; draws tears from case-hardened actors who thrust their enraptured heads out of the wings to watch her; returns to her room, where the decorators are waiting, demolishes their plans and reconstructs them; collapses, wipes her brow with a lace handkerchief and thinks of fainting; suddenly rushes up to the fifth floor, invades the premises of the astonished costumier, rummages in the wardrobes, makes up a costume, pleats and adjusts it; returns to her room and teaches the figurantes how to dress their hair; has a piece read to her while she makes bouquets; listens to hundreds of letters, weeps over some tale of misfortune, and opens the inexhaustible little chinking handbag; confers with an English perruquier; returns to the stage to superintend the lighting of a scene, objurgates the lamps and reduces the electrician to a state of temporary insanity; sees a super who has blundered the day before, remembers it, and overwhelms him with her indignation; returns to her room for dinner; sits down to table, splendidly pale with fatigue; ruminates her plans; eats with peals of Bohemian laughter; has no time to finish; dresses for the evening performance while the manager reports from the other side of a curtain; acts with all her heart and soul; discusses business between the acts; remains at the theatre after the performance, and makes arrangements until three o’clock in the morning; does not make up her mind to go until she sees her staff respectfully endeavouring to keep awake; gets into her carriage; huddles herself into her furs and anticipates the delights of lying down and resting at last; bursts out laughing on remembering that some one is waiting to read her a five-act play; returns home, listens to the piece, becomes excited, weeps, accepts it, finds she cannot sleep, and takes advantage of the opportunity to study a part!

This, my dear Huret, is what seems to me more extraordinary than anything. This is the Sarah I have always known. I never made the acquaintance of the Sarah with the coffin and the alligators. The only Sarah I know is the one who works. She is the greater.

Edmond Rostand.

Paris, April 25, 1899.