Читать книгу Sarah Bernhardt as I knew her - Mme. Pierre Berton - Страница 9

Table of Contents

In later years it was fairly well known amongst theatrical people that Sarah was subject to “stage fright.” The only occasion however on which nerves actually stopped her performance, occurred at Auteuil school, when she was eight years and three months old. Sarah told this story to me on one memorable day at Ville d’Avray, when, during a fête given by the Grand Duke Peter of Russia, we had stolen away from the crowd into Bellevue woods. I have never seen the incident referred to in print.

“I had been at the school a little more than a year,” Sarah told me, “when it was decided to give a performance of Clotilde, a play for children, which concerned a little girl’s adventures in fairyland. Stella Colas, afterwards the wife of Pierre de Corvin, was cast for the name part. Another little fair girl (whose name I have forgotten) was to play the rôle of Augustine, the partner of Clotilde. And I was cast for the part of the Queen of the Fairies.

“At the rehearsals—we rehearsed all the winter—everything went well. My part was not an important one, but it involved some pretty realistic acting in the second act, when the Queen of the Fairies dies of mortification on hearing Clotilde affirm that the fairies do not really exist. This was the first ‘death scene’ in which I ever acted.

“I wore wings, of course, and many rehearsals were necessary before the stage-manager, who was our kindergarten teacher, could get me to fall without breaking them. Finally I learned the part, and managed to do it to the entire satisfaction of everyone.

“When the great night came, we were, of course, all very nervous, myself most of all, for my mother and two aunts had written that they would be present accompanied by no less a personage than the Duc de Morny, then considered to be the power behind Napoleon the Third’s throne.

“Before the curtain went up, my knees were knocking together and I felt a wild desire to fly. I tried to run away and hide, in fact, but the teacher found me, petted me and made me promise to go on with the part.

“I had nothing to do until the end of the first act, when Clotilde and Augustine fall asleep at the foot of a great tree and dream of the fairies. My part was to descend from the tree, assisted by unseen wires, float to the middle of the stage, and then pronounce the words: ‘On demande la reine des rêves? Me voici!’ (‘They want the Queen of Dreams? Here I am!’)

“Clotilde and Augustine fell asleep, and trembling all over I floated down and advanced to the front of the stage. We had no regular footlights, and everyone in the little auditorium could be distinguished from the stage.

“Instead of pronouncing the sentence about the Queen of Dreams, I stood tongue-tied, unable to utter a syllable. Several times my mouth opened, and I tried to speak, but the words would not come. All the time I was anxiously searching the audience for familiar faces. It was only when I saw none, and realised that my mother was not present, that I managed to stutter:

“‘On d-d-dem-m-m-mande la reine d-des rêves? M-m-me voici!’

“The last word I uttered in one breathless syllable; then rushed off the stage to the accompaniment of much amused applause.

“In the wings of the tiny stage I was met by the principal of the school, who, affecting not to notice my embarrassment, complimented me warmly on my ‘success,’ and then told me that my mother and her party had not arrived. This, more than anything else, gave me the necessary courage to go through with my part.

“Even in later years when I was on the regular stage, the presence of my mother in an audience invariably made me so nervous that I could hardly play. She was ever the harshest critic I had!

“The second act proceeded fairly well, since it was chiefly a dance by the fairies, with myself in the centre, wielding a mystic sceptre. All I had to do was wave the sceptre, and the fairies would bow as it was raised and lowered. Finally came the big moment when Clotilde awakens, and says: ‘Pshaw, I was dreaming; there are no such things as fairies!’

“With these words I was supposed to stop and wave my sceptre indignantly, on which all the other fairies disappeared, leaving me alone with Clotilde and the sleeping Augustine. Clotilde advances to me and asks: ‘Who are you?’ To my reply ‘I am the Queen of the Fairies,’ she answers scornfully: ‘You are a fraud, for there are no such things as fairies.’

“When she utters these words I stagger and then, moaning and clasping my hand to my heart, sink slowly to the ground. Clotilde, agonised, asks: ‘What is the matter?’ and I reply: ‘You have killed me, for when a little girl says she doesn’t believe in the fairies, she mortally wounds their Queen.’

“We had got as far as my reply ‘I am the Queen,’ when suddenly I perceived, in the front row of the audience, six beautifully-gowned ladies and two gentlemen, who had not been there before. In trepidation I searched their faces, standing stock-still and not listening to Clotilde’s scornful reply. Yes! There was my mother, and there were my two aunts, as I had feared!

“All my stage-fright came back to me. And, instead of sinking to the ground as I was supposed to do, I burst out sobbing and ran off the stage, in the centre of which I left poor Clotilde standing, a forlorn little girl of ten. Instantly there was a storm of laughter and applause. Unable to stand it, Clotilde too ran off the stage, and the curtain was hastily rung down.

“Soon I was surrounded with teachers and elder girls, some abusing me, others begging me to finish the play. But it was useless. I could act no more and the play, for lack of an understudy, was over. I was hustled, a weeping and very bedraggled-looking fairy, to the dormitory, where I was left alone with my thoughts.

“I would have given worlds to have been left alone for the remainder of the day! But it was not to be, for scarcely fifteen minutes passed before the door opened and my mother appeared, followed by my aunts and their whole party!

“I could have prayed for the floor to open and swallow me! I hid my head in the bedclothes, like an ostrich, and affected not to hear the words addressed to me. Finally I felt firm hands on my shoulders and I was dragged forth, weeping violently.

“If mother had only taken me in her arms and kissed and comforted me! I was only a tiny child, not yet nine years old and still constitutionally weak, with high-strung nerves. But she stood there holding me and looking coldly into my tear-filled eyes.

“‘And to think,’ she said icily, ‘that this is a child of mine!’

“‘One would never think it,’ said Aunt Rosine, sternly.

“All were hard, unsympathetic, seeming not to realise that they were bullying a child whose nerves were at the breaking point and who was in reality almost dead from exhaustion. I broke into another storm of sobs and, kicking myself free from my mother, ran to the bed and threw myself upon it in despair. With some further unkindly remarks from my mother and aunts, the party finally left, but as he reached the door the Duc de Morny, the last to go out, turned and retraced the few steps to my bed.

“‘Never mind, my little one,’ he whispered. ‘You will show them all how to act one of these days, won’t you?’

“His comforting words, however, had come too late. I had sobbed myself into a fever and the next morning the doctor had to be called. For several days I was kept in bed and forbidden to see the other girls. Through these long four days I kept thinking constantly of my mother. Why had she been so cruel, so cold to her daughter? I knew that another child had been born the year before, and with childish intuition I hit upon the right answer. Mother loved the baby more than she loved me—if, indeed, she loved me at all. I was inconsolable at the thought. How lonely a vista the coming years opened to my immature imagination! Scores of times I sobbed out loud: ‘I would rather be dead! I would rather be dead!’

“Alas! this was not the last time that my mother’s chilly behaviour towards me threw me into a paroxysm of misery resulting in illness. I never grew callous to her disapproval of me; her cutting criticisms had always the power to wound me to the heart. And yet I loved her! More, I adored her! Poor, lonely, friendless child that I was and had ever been, my starved heart cried out to the one human being whose love I had the right to claim, and who responded to my caresses sometimes almost as if I had been a stranger.”

This was the only occasion on which Sarah Bernhardt ever bewailed to me or to anyone else, her mother’s lack of affection for her. She was scrupulously loyal to both her parents, and on the rare occasions when she mentioned them, it was always in terms of genuine love and respect.

During her two years in Auteuil, Sarah’s mother went to see her only three times, and her father only once. Her father’s visit took place at the end of the first year, in December 1851. It was the first time, to her recollection, that Sarah had ever seen him. They met in the head-mistress’s office, and the occasion must have been replete with drama.

“I was called from study one afternoon about three o’clock,” said Sarah, “and taken to Mme. Fressard’s bureau. I found her waiting for me at the door with a peculiar expression on her face, and in the arm-chair near the fireplace I saw a very well-dressed man of about thirty, with a waxed moustache.

“‘Ma chérie,’ said Madame Fressard, ‘here is your father come to see you.’

“Mon père! So this was the mysterious personage whose wish and order governed my life; this the parent of whom my mother was apparently so much in fear, and yet whom she seldom saw; this the stranger who was responsible for my being!

“I advanced shyly and gave my face to be kissed, an operation which my father performed twice, on both sides, his moustache giving me a prickly sensation on my cheeks.

“‘Why, she is growing into quite a little beauty!’ he said to Madame Fressard, holding me so that he could look at me closely. Then he asked me many questions: Was I happy? Was I well? Had I playmates? What had I learned? Could I read and write?—and spell?—and do sums?

“The interrogation lasted ten minutes and then my father took his tall grey hat and gloves, and prepared to leave.

“‘We will leave her with you for a little while longer, madame,’ he said to Madame Fressard, while I listened with all my ears.

“‘I am going for a long journey and do not expect to return for eight or ten months. When I come back we will consider what is best to be done.’

“Kissing me again, he took his departure and Madame Fressard drew me to her.

“‘I should think you would love your father very, very much,’ she said. ‘He is such a handsome man!’

“‘How can I love him?’ I replied wonderingly. ‘I have never seen him before.’”

A year later Bernhardt had not returned from South America, but he sent Julie a letter, in which he urged that Sarah should be taken from Madame Fressard’s preparatory school and sent to a convent; he suggested Grandchamps Convent, at Versailles. He had written to the Superior, he said, explaining the circumstances, and the latter had replied that if little Sarah was sponsored by one other gentleman, preferably one in Paris, the matter could be arranged. Julie at once asked the Duc de Morny, who agreed to sponsor the child.

In the same letter Bernhardt said that he had made his will, in which he left 20,000 francs to Sarah, providing she had married before the age of twenty-one.

“I do not intend my daughter,” he wrote coldly, “to follow the example of her mother.”

Until she was twenty-one the income from the 20,000 francs was to pay for Sarah’s schooling. Her mother was to pay for her clothes.

Although the letter said that Bernhardt did not expect to return to France for several months, he actually caught the next boat to that which carried his letter, and arrived in Paris just after Sarah had been withdrawn from the school at Auteuil.

This had not been effected without a storm of protest on Sarah’s part. The two years had passed happily at Madame Fressard’s, and she feared the future, surrounded by strange and cold relatives.

Julie had gone to London, and it was Aunt Rosine who went to the school to fetch the child.

Sarah delighted to tell of this departure from the school.

“I hated to leave,” she told me, “and it was two hours before they could succeed in dressing me. Once this was accomplished, I flew at Tante Rosine like a young fury, and spoiled all her elaborate coiffure.

“She was furious and, bundling me into her coach, commanded me to keep silent. But I would not, and throughout the journey in the jolting carriage from Auteuil to 6, rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, where my aunt and my mother owned a joint flat, I tore at her hair and kicked at her legs, and otherwise performed like the disgraceful young ragamuffin I really was.

“I was no better on our arrival at the flat, and kept the whole household in an uproar until I heard the sudden announcement that my father had arrived! Then I collapsed and had to be carried to bed, where I lost consciousness for three hours. When I awoke, it was to find a doctor and nurse installed and an array of medicine bottles on the table. I felt utterly exhausted and I heard Doctor Monod, the great physician who had been called by the Duc de Morny, tell my father that I was in an extremely delicate condition and that my recovery depended upon my being kept absolutely quiet. ‘Above all,’ said he, ‘she is not to be “crossed.”’”

Sarah’s father often visited her during her three days’ convalescence from the fever brought on by a fit of temper, and on two occasions he brought with him Rossini, who lived in the same street and was an intimate friend.

Julie had been informed of Sarah’s illness, but was herself ill at Haarlem, in Holland, where she had just arrived from London. It was a fortnight before she reached Paris, and in the meantime Sarah stayed at Neuilly, in the home of another and married aunt whose husband afterwards became a monk.

When Julie finally arrived, a dinner was arranged to take place the night before Sarah was taken to the Convent. Edouard Bernhardt was present. This was the last time Sarah saw her father, for he died shortly afterwards in Italy.

Sarah’s life at the Convent has been more or less faithfully described in her own Memoirs, and I shall not dilate on it here. She was expelled three times—the last time for good. She was baptised at the age of twelve under the name of Rosine, and from then on dated her determination to become a nun. For two years she was fanatical on the subject of religion, but this did not prevent her fits of temper from breaking out and disturbing the whole school.

“All my time at the Convent I was haunted by the desire to be a nun,” she said to me once. “The beautiful life of the sisters who taught us at Grandchamps, their almost unearthly purity, their tranquil tempers, all made a tremendous impression on me. I dearly desired to take the vows and, had it been left to me, Sarah Bernhardt would have become Sister Rosine. But I doubt whether I would have remained a nun for life!

“I was never genuinely religious. It was the glamour and mystery and, above all, the tranquillity surrounding the life of a cloistered nun that attracted me. I should have run away from the Convent before many weeks.”

Young Sarah was tremendously high-spirited and constantly in trouble. The nuns were always sending despairing reports to her mother.

Once, during a presentation of prizes, she pretended to faint and acted the part so realistically that even the Superior was deceived and believed her pupil to be dead. It gave her such a shock that the poor lady was ill for days. Sarah was sent to her bedroom in disgrace.

“I spent the time reading forbidden books and eating bonbons that the concierge had smuggled in to me,” she said, in telling me the story.

On another occasion she organised a flight from the Convent. In the dead of night she and six other girls of a similarly adventurous disposition climbed down torn and knotted sheets from their dormitory windows to the ground. Clambering over the high wall surrounding the Convent grounds, they took to their heels and were caught only at noon the next day, when in the act of throwing stones at horses of the Royal Dragoons.

For this exploit she was expelled, but was allowed to return on her promise never to give trouble again.

Scarcely two months afterwards, however, she was discovered by the mother-superior on top of the Convent wall, imitating the Bishop of Versailles, whom the day before she had seen conducting the Burial Service at a graveside. Expelled again!

On still another occasion she was caught flirting with a young soldier, who had tossed his cap over the wall. When the nuns tried to catch her, she climbed the wall and stayed there for hours, until long after dark. On this occasion she caught a chill which nearly resulted in her death, and when she had recovered she left the Convent for good.